What If Roles Were Reversed?

Reuters continues to push the racial buttons:

CAMP WILLIAMS, Utah (Reuters) - Asked whether he would relocate permanently to Utah after being brought here as a refugee from Hurricane Katrina, Larry Andrew rattled off a series of questions on Friday on the delicate issue of race.

"How do the adults really feel about us moving in?" he asked at Camp Williams, a military base 21 miles south of Salt Lake City housing about 400 refugees from last weeks disaster. "What if I find a Caucasian girl and decide to date her?

"Will I have to deal with whispering behind me and eyeballing me?" asked the 36-year-old black man.

For the mostly poor, black refugees evacuated from New Orleans, few places are as geographically remote and culturally alien as this corner of Utah, where 0.2 percent of the population in the nearest town is black.

I guess his query begs the question--what if you took displaced Utah residents and put them in pre-Katrina New Orleans, would they be under scrutiny and "eyeballed" if they dated a black woman?

Why would Reuters even run a stupid piece such as this? Of course the answer is to keep the race issue at the forefront of Katrina coverage.