> Anytime you see an ad or promotional thing in a McDonald's -- the employee recruitment one-sheets, or the tray liner papers with four or five kids playing or something -- is it ever inconspicuous that the four or five people shown represent both genders and four or five races? And if it ever STOPPED being that way, who wouldn't notice THAT, too? And then McDonald's would be getting the same kinds of questions your cartoonist got.

Hmm... Actually, I DO find it inconspicuous, and I probably WOULDN'T notice if it stopped being that way. Maybe I'm just the perfect example of racial tolerance. I think everyone in the world should try harder to be like me. (Oh, but don't start dumping your spouses and significant others and person thingys-- You don't have to be single to be racially tolerant. *wink*)

> Unfortunately it's ok to have discussions like this, but it's not ok to do anything about it, or you're a traitor to the cause. The thing is, the reasons people have for advocating racial quotas are pretty much all right. Where people go wrong is trying to legislate equality, trying to legislate equality by sacrificing freedom, and by not realizing that, as you say, race quotas do more harm than good anyway.

Amen to that. Racial quotas in the workforce have scared me from time to time. Being a caucasian male, I knew in high school that equality laws would always work against me (at least in Canada where my demographic dominates the work force). I didn't feel any racial resentment because of it, though-- as I said before, I am a model of tolerance. ;-) Instead I focused my resentment on a government and culture which could not find a better way. Now I'm a bitter old man sitting in a basement under a bare light bulb writing letters to the government. Oh, wait, no, I'm not. I found a good job anyway and stopped caring. Still, the cure seems worse than the disease, and I agree that in the majority of cases, equality laws DO cause more racial tension. I think a better system would be to improve educational processes, ensuring that minorities got equal education in all cases, and then having laws which enforce FAIR hiring practices-- i.e., if an applicant is the best qualified, he or she can NOT be turned down on the basis of race. Of course, this can be subject to abuses (how does an outside regulatory agency determine who the best candidate is?) but I like it, and right now, I'm going to go with it.

> S "married a white woman, will only ever have white children; must be a racist" am

Don "I hate seeing something that makes me laugh out loud at work, but that was worth it! Hee hee... :-)" Monkey