When I was in high school, I worked as a "courtesy clerk" (aka bagger) at the Alpha Beta store in La Mesa. One of the nicest guys working there was a big, black guy named Reggie. Reggie was in charge of receiving, so he spent most of his days in the back, but occasionally he would run a register or stock some shelves. Reggie was also a health nut and a bodybuilder.

One Saturday, Reggie and I did something that was not uncommon those days (but is dangerous and uncommon now). We chased a couple of shoplifters out into the parking lot. These shoplifters were a black couple and though Reggie and I failed to stop them from stealing, they called Reggie an Oreo as they raced away in their car. Reggie was both saddened and angered by the slur. Since when does earning an honest living in a store make you black on the outside and white on the inside? Even more insulting is why is stealing synonymous with being black?

A couple of things brought this story to mind. First, I recently finished Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt." It's an interesting and thought-provoking read as Steele deals with a liberal elitist mindset that assumes that blacks today "owe" what they have to whites who pushed throught LBJ's Great Society programs -- despite all of the evidence that those programs were an utter failure.

Secondly, there are parallels to this idea that blacks "owe" or should be "grateful" to a certain political party more than 40 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed because of all of the social programs that party has passed (once again, despite the fact that the programs have been failures in lifting blacks out of poverty) -- just ask Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the GOP nominee for Senate in that state.

Lt. Gov. Steele yesterday sent a letter to his Senate opponent Democrat Ben Cardin, along with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asking for formal apologies for the racist and sometimes criminal antics of those in the Democrats' employ.

Congressman Cardin, while saying you have expressed outrage to “all concerned parties” for the racist comments on your senior staffer’s blog, you have yet to apologize to me. Chairman Dean, your personal pollster, Cornell Belcher, advocated racist attacks to “knock” me down and “discredit” me, and yet I have received no apology from you. And, Senator Schumer, your staffers pled guilty to a crime when they stole my credit report and violated my privacy and that of my family, but I have had no apology from you either.

Read the whole letter. The straw that finally broke the camel's back was the fact that one of the Democrat Party's operatives tasked with videotaping every public appearance by Lt. Gov. Steele didn't think there was any difference between a public campaign speech and a private moment with two women who had lost their sons in Iraq at a homecoming for a Maryland Army National Guard unit.

Politics is a dirty business, but sometimes these things just go too far. Schumer, Cardin and Dean owe Lt. Gov. Steele an apology, but I'm going to suggest that no one hold their breath.