Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial: 07/02/2000 RACE AGAINST TIME   This is a diverse country, we keep hearing. Diversity training has become the corporate equivalent of driver's ed--a few courses and you can drive through the ethnic minefields of 21st century America. But like gravity, the law of unintended consequences will have its way. All the emphasis on diversity has made us more racist, not less. Take the New York Times front page story this Independence Day week. It details the struggles of a white quarterback for the football team at historically-black Southern University. He was finally driven off campus, he felt, by black racism. Of course, it went by the name of Afro-Centrism. Or take my bi-racial stepdaughter. She's African, Italian, English, and German-American. When we lived in Miami, everyone thought she was Hispanic. She fit in, she felt. But we then moved to a city without much of a Hispanic population but with a good deal of black-white tension. Both the Heartland blacks and whites she encountered subscribe to the "one drop" theory, much beloved of old-line segregationists---that one drop of black blood makes you black, period. She was forced to choose, and chose the black culture, black boyfriends, black music. Why? Because its where she feels she fits. We're all being forced to make similar choices based on hyphenated diversity. "Cultural identity" is code for racism, pure and simple. It allows you to seal yourself off inside your own little Bosnia. There's us--black, Mexican, Cuban, Irish, German, Polish, West Indian--and there's them. You'd never know that there are things out there that affect all of us as Americans. How high should taxes be? Should we go to Mars? Is an anti-missile defense a good idea? What's the most effective kind of education reform? What do we do about Social Security? If we're so peaceful and prosperous, how come we're so unhappy? The great thing about being a radio talk host is that it gives you constant feedback from people with the station's talk number on their speed dial. And whenever we do a program on race, from affirmative action to the perils of driving while black, we generally get one of two kinds of responses. The first is that it's the other guy's fault. Blacks are pathological lawbreakers with a slave mentality, whites say. Whites are blind racists who autommatically support cops shooting us, blacks say. We're tired of both of you, what about our special problems, Hispanics and Asians chime in. The second response, though, is becoming more common. It comes from people, mostly white, who say they're sick of the entire discussion and tune out whenever anyone brings up race. I don't care, they say. The biggest enemy of any democracy is that kind of apathy and indifference. Fewer people care about issues, so fewer people want to hear about them, so fewer people vote, so we end up with a system rigged in favor of the well-organized and well-heeled few who turn out at the polls and give money to candidates. Fact-check time. In the dog pound of nations, America is that frisky mongrel, the eager mutt proudly flashing his lack of specific pedigree in the face of the pure-bred Pomeranians, the Aryan Airedales, the monochromatic Mastiffs. You think you're purely African-American? Explain the mocha skin, green eyes, and vaguely reddish tint of your hair. You think you're 100 per-cent white? Then why the slightly flattened nose, the curly hair, the full lips? Purebred Asian, are we? Then why the slightly rounded eyes and slightly pale skin? Unadulterated Hispanic (or Latino if you prefer)? What's that mean? How much is Indian and Castillian and black and Irish? Mexican? Cuban? Salvadoreno? Dominican? I'm old enough to remember when the "one drop" theory justified segregated drinking fountains, schools, bathrooms, and just about everything else. Now it's being used to justify a more pernicious form of segregation, this one by choice, not by law. In this week of patriotic rhetoric, it's time for all of us to wave the flag and wag our tails. I may have my shots and I may be housebroken, but I defy anyone in the p.c. equivalent of the American kennel Club to guess my lineage. Join the discussion

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