Liberal compassion takes a summer break

By John Eidson

During a recent trip to visit my in-laws in Austin, I had the pleasure of seeing my 9 year old niece participate in a performance of The Music Man, the culminating event of the summer drama camp she attended.

The affair was held in the auditorium of an elementary school in a section of Austin called Travis Heights, an upscale neighborhood known for its high-priced homes and left-wing politics.

Conservatives like me are accused by the other side of not caring about minorities. Many liberals are convinced that they are morally-superior people who have virtually infinite compassion for people whose skin color is different from their own.

With that bit of the American political landscape in mind, and venturing for the first time into the heart of one of the nation’s foremost bastions of liberalism, I expected to encounter a rainbow of diversity, balanced numbers of proud black and white and brown parents watching their black and white and brown young thespians perform.

I could not have been more wrong. Rarely have I witnessed a more lily-white event. It was like attending a hockey game. Out of some 250 people, those with dark skin could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

One might think that Austin’s wine and cheese Democrats would have made arrangements to include a few disadvantaged minority kids in the drama enrichment program their own privileged children attended.

But I guess compassion like that would run the risk that their kids might become friends with children of color from the other side of the tracks.

John Eidson is a white conservative who takes great pleasure in black success.