I had the good fortune to speak with one of my last readers for Conception, Volume Two of the Darkside Trilogy. Good fortune in that he's well over eighty years old, and a white man.

His perspective is valuable because he's one of the few white men of that era that is truly color blind. He's a former Executive Search professional, considered one of the top corporate recruiters in the heyday of retained search. He often reads a book or two every week, fiction and non-fiction.

He's also reviewed Discovery on Amazon. He asked me, after reading about halfway through Conception, are American blacks so disenchanted with American society that they would, indeed, be likely to give up everything this planet has to offer to emigrate to a lunar colony with no whites in sight?

My initial answer, based on the many African Americans who I have had the privilege of talking to who have read Discovery, was yes. I said without hesitation that were I offered the opportunity to join a technologically advanced community made up of blacks only I would leave in a heartbeat. But would that be possible? After all, I'm bi-racial, and so far that issue hasn't been explicitly broached in either Discovery or Conception.

In this America, not my alternative Darkside Universe, my being bi-racial has its advantages. having a Japanese last name gives me a pass, or at least "other" consideration than someone who is straight-up black.

The way I speak sets me apart as "other," when I don't forget and revert to earlier times. And taking that all into consideration I have to admit that I would still jump at the chance to leave all this behind, as nearly everyone else I've spoken at length to about the prospect. But I digress...

The issue I wanted to discuss is one of whites truly having a blind spot regarding the systemic slights and prejudices blacks still face today. I mentioned to him how white, anti-government militia groups have grown by 800% since the election of President Obama. I told him about how a black professor thanked me for writing Discovery because something that is just a matter of life for non-whites is somehow invisible to whites, the fact that by and large blacks must achieve twice as much to get half the credits whites would under identical circumstances.

Once I related how my father's family was locked up in a concentration camp in Utah during WWII for no better reason than they were Japanese, and that my grandfather on my mother's side was chased out of Oklahoma merely because he and his brother were more successful breeding, raising and selling cattle made them lynching bait, and how this systemic injustice was standard operating procedure for anyone not white, the focus of the trilogy was much clearer to my 80+ year-old reader.

Then he began to tell me stories about the great similarities between South Africa and the South in the 1950s. And then the context of what I wrote began to take hold. The sad conclusion of our conversation today was that the advances in racial equality have been largely cosmetic; that whites today are scared of losing their innate privilege; and that the relegation of American whites into minority status is driving the fear and bigoted excesses in an effort to stave off equality for all.

My friend is a remarkable man, and truly color blind where it counts. More's the pity that there are so few...