About a month ago, my wife Barbara and I were hanging out in Asheville, N.C., for a few days. We picked up the local paper to see if the Tourists would be playing while we were in town (nope--they were on the road), and we saw a story that reminded us of our recent past. Charlie Robertson, the mayor of York, Penn., faces a murder indictment stemming from a race riot more than 30 years ago.

I never liked Charlie. He's one of the last of the old-line conservative Democrats who runs York city proper. It's important to make the distinction between the two York, Pennsylvanias. York city, while the center of attention, has very little in common with York County. Somewhere around 40,862 folks call the 5.2 square miles of York city home (all figures are from the 2000 Census--I did my homework). York city politics are still run by Democrats--most of them decidedly conservative. York County is run by an increasingly moderate Republican machine. York County holds more than 380,000 people and 70 municipalities (townships, boroughs and cities) within its 911 square miles. York city is 63 percent white, 28 percent black and 16 percent hispanic (Asians make up two percent and American Indians one percent). York County is 93 percent white, 4 percent black and 3 percent hispanic.

I didn't sling absolute figures your way, but I've calculated that about 75 percent of York County's black population and two-thirds of its hispanic population live within the cramped confines of York city proper. Almost all the rest live in townships just outside the city--or in Hanover, the other manufacturing center of the county (home of Utz and Snyder's of Hanover snacks, renowned all up and down the East Coast) which lies some 25 miles to the southwest of York city.

The thing I want to make clear is that there couldn't be a race riot anywhere in York County but in the city. I'll let you to figure out why there are so few minorities outside of York city. For the most part, it's no accident.

Ah, but let's get back to the fun, shall we? The guy who's after ol' Charlie (a man I who never got my vote, despite being a Democrat--I voted straight Libertarian in city elections) is (Republican) District Attorney Stan Rebert, who's been a political rival of Robertson's for years. I don't know if Shoemaker actually thinks he can convict Robertson. No one believes that Robertson pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Lillie Belle Allen in 1969. He may or may not have handed out ammo to white youths during the unrest. He was, certainly, the first police officer on the scene. He was, at the time (and for all we know, still is), a white supremacist.

I don't really care what happens to Charlie. He's something of an arrogant fool, the kinda guy who likes to sputter in a self-important way. The thing is, the folks in the national media (most recently, a 20-minute feature on NPR last Friday) are focusing on York, seeming to say "Thank God we've learned our lesson. We're so much better than they are."

Nope. Huh-unh. No way.

Not two weeks ago, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft had the gall to stand up and say, "The death penalty isn't biased against minorities. It's just that minorities kill more people, on average."

I'm not going to dispute his numbers. They're accurate. I'm disturbed by the notion that such a finding should end the discussion. Is Ashcroft not the least bit curious why minorities kill more people? Or does he figure that as long as good people don't associate with those people, the good people will be fine?

That's the only assumption I can make. And as long as our leaders are separating the citizens of this country into us and them, as long as we accept the "fact" that some people like to live in poverty and that those people just don't have what it takes to be regular members of society, well, all of us are just as bad as the worst racists in York (County and city).

Most of the folks I know have no problems with well-to-do blacks or hispanics. Even your average racist wouldn't dare say much of anything bad about folks like Colin Powell or Tiger Woods or Jimmy Smits or Jeb Bush's wife Colombia. But when the conversation turns to social problems and I start hearing sweeping negative generalities passed off as "facts," well, the true flags are unfurled. Remember the "welfare queen" icon? You know, all those (assumed black) ladies who parked their massive Cadillacs in handicapped spaces on their way to pick up their welfare checks? Similar absurdities are still being uttered by people in the highest positions of power.

It's not just York. It's all of us. We should want to know what causes our societal ills. We should want to try to treat the disease rather than simply run away and cower under mosquito netting.

We should rejoice in our diversity, not retreat into our own little enclaves and bolt the doors. We should want absolute tolerance of racial, gender, religious and other differences and be willing to sacrifice some of our own personal well-being to achieve this.

It doesn't matter if Charlie Robertson gets convicted. He's just playing the last high-stakes political poker game of his life. D.A. Shoemaker wants to wipe out the last reliably Democratic enclave in York County. The trial doesn't have anything to do with racial politics, no matter how many racists there are per square mile in not-quite Amish country.

What matters is that we keep asking questions. A more important question is why the city never did much of anything about Allen's murder 32 years ago. That's the real story coming out of not-quite Amish country these days. And it's a question each of us should ask of the leaders in our own towns and cities, because if you think such events don't lurk in the past of your town, you're sorely mistaken. The past is past, but we can make the future a better one. Just takes a lot of hard work.

Jon Worley jumps up on his soapbox now and again.