Wow.

It only took four days, but I finally overheard the first racist comment in connection with the Blacksburg, Virginia tragedy.

I’m at a St. Pete coffee shop when a tall, middle-aged man, dressed in a starched white shirt and black pants, steps in. As he pours his coffee, the man, whose nametag identified him as a manager at Publix, makes small talk with the  barista. He looks down at today’s St. Petersburg Times front page.

“Just by looking at him you could tell,” he says. “You can’t trust those Asians — they bombed us 50 years ago.”

Wow.

This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2007.