I looked up aggressive multiculturalism in Google and got a hit on "Toxic Workshop," in the book OLD FOLKS AT HOME: A FLORIDA CRACKER'S SUNSET CRUISE.

My hero, or antihero's name was Old Folks.

Instead of rewriting "Toxic Workshop," I inserted it in I DRIVE TO OJUS.

Instead of changing Old Folks's name, I left it the same.

I am Old Folks.

Old Folks. White Folks. Old Fart.

As I say, classes like that do more harm than good.

Once I took a business writing class at Lucent.

This was after my experience in the toxic workshop.

One of the reasons I liked working at Lucent was it was diverse.

I volunteered to serve on the diversity council because I believed in what they were doing, and they needed white males on the council so it wouldn't look like it was just minorities, women, and queers, working for their own narrow interests.

In the business writing class I took I think there were one or two white men, one or two white women, several black men, a lot of black women, and right many foreigners.

Everyone was professional. Polite, respectful of others, relaxed. Curious. "I see you have a bone through your nasal septum."

Nobody was uptight, clannish, reserved, or stand-offish, as my workshop was, after the instructor polarized us, having the whites and black meet separately, to discuss issues raised in class.

We went to lunch together, more or less with who we were sitting next to, or working on a class project with.

I had a keen memory of the black people I had been friendly with in the halls, at Lucent, before the workshop, and how, after the workshop, there was a reserve, a coolness there that hadn't existed before.

Maybe they just saw my true colors, I am a racist, I had been hiding it from them, before. Hiding it from myself. Maybe I was deceiving myself.

If it's okay to dislike a racist, I should have disliked them, after the way I saw how they acted in the class.

It made me more guarded. Less open.

My experience was you can't talk about the subject frankly. My honesty was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I couldn't get anyone to listen to me with an open mind. Give me the benefit of the doubt. Hear me out.

They didn't need to listen.

They had their minds made up.