As I walked around Fells Point and Canton this afternoon, seeing the sights and buying sundry items, a green flier stapled to a telephone pole caught my eye, headlined, “PROTECT YOURSELF FROM AIDS!” The list that followed seemed pretty normal: “use condoms, avoid sex with multiple partners,” but item number three took me aback: “Don’t have sex with blacks! They are 14 times more likely to be infected!” A closer look showed that it was a National Alliance flier. White supremacist neo-Nazis.

Singling out and vilifying Africans on the basis of a crude statistical generalization: I can’t even begin to describe how wrong that is on so many levels. And equally troubling is the realization that I myself, a citizen of foreign ethnicity, am just as likely to be a target for this kind of ogrish hate.

I walked a bit further down the street and saw another flier: “Racist Scum, Your Time Will Come.” That didn’t make me feel very much better.