As Larry Elder makes clear in a recent piece about "flipping the bird" sometimes, what can seem like racism or bigotry really isn't racism or bigotry at all:

When driving to work a couple weeks ago, the convertible in front of me, with three young black men and a young black female driver, stopped for the red light at an intersection. But when the light changed to green, the convertible just sat there with the passengers yakking away. Not one of those who honks right away, I sat for a bit - from seven to 10 seconds - waiting for the driver to get going. Then I gently tapped my horn.

The three passengers immediately flipped me the bird, with the two in the backseat glowering at me as we moved forward. The staring continued until we stopped at the next red light, with the driver this time - presumably intentionally - sitting at the green light for several seconds before moving. The same thing happened at the next red light.

While I told this story to my brother, our pace slowed as we approached the bookstore. Soon, my brother and I stood still in an empty parking space as I finished my tale. "Was I a victim," I asked Kirk, "of being a black-man-driving-behind-a-convertible-full-of-black-people-who-flipped-me-off?"

Elder was black (which means race was not an issue with the convertible occupants) but I'm sure a lot of white guys in the same situation would have assumed that race must somehow have been involved.

The Elder story reminded me of one of Coco's most annoying habits -- something which I fear makes me look like a white racist cracker. When I take her in the car, she barks at pedestrians. All pedestrians -- white, black, Asian, Latino. She hates fast movements, so she doesn't like the way they whiz by when she's in the car. What she just cannot grasp is that it's not the people who are whizzing by her car, it's her car that's whizzing by the people. Instead of thinking it over logically and applying simple laws of physics, she barks furiously with a sound best described as a "drive-by barking." Coco is not alone in this misperception; I have had many dogs do the same thing to me over the years. I do not take it personally, nor have I ever noticed the race of the dog-owners.

But what always makes me cringe is when the "victim" of Coco's drive-by barkings happens to be black, because I'm afraid I'm going to get that look. It's a look that says, "there goes another cracker with a vicious dog trained to hate black people." I hate to read race into a look, because the look might just be grounded in fear of dogs (and Coco is a media-maligned "pit bull" after all) but I don't think it's completely my imagination because I just don't get quite the same look of dismay from white people. I almost feel like pulling over and explaining that I'm really not a cracker, that Coco does this to everyone, that not only does she not hate black people, but her veterinarian -- whom she allows to handle, poke, prod, and even inject her without a peep -- is black. I honestly don't think my dog is aware that humans have such a thing as races. But the pedestrians don't know that.

I remember when I discovered that a well known leftist blogger was black. I had not known this, and I had ridiculed him without knowing. (As if a thing like that should matter -- but it sure as hell did!) Suddenly, I wondered whether my attack might be seen as "racist." Just the awareness of race has a way of changing things, and it should not. Yet, even the unawareness of the man's race was seen (by him) as evidence that the unaware were making the (racist) assumption that he was white!

Without thinking, we are all conditioned to think this argument means that race matters. Yet it is not race that matters; it's that the awareness of race triggers a fear-based reaction -- the awareness of the possibility of an appearance of racism.

The appearance of racism is what matters. Far more than race. Or racism.

What worries me is that if people are forced to avoid the appearance of racism, they are going to avoid any and all situations which might put them in a position of ever having to deal with the possibility of the appearance of the appearance. If the only way to avoid the appearance of racism is to avoid people of other races, ultimately, this could lead to real racism.

Maybe Coco's trying to teach me something in her crude way.

Whatever lesson it is, it seems lost on her "victims."