It is very difficult to be honest about race and so I applaud Capt. Don Sax of the Belleville Police Department. After the department released a videotape of the recent assault on a school bus, Sax was asked his opinion about motive.

"In my estimation, it's racially motivated," he said. He pointed out that not only had two black students assaulted a white student, but that other black students had cheered during the attacks.

Sax later said the real motive for the assault was bullying and that his original comments were "premature."

I watched the videotape and I agreed with Sax's initial assessment. Then again, whenever I hear of black people attacking a white person, or white people attacking a black person, I figure the attack was racially motivated. At the very least, I figure race was a key component.

Maybe that says something about me. Of course it does. It says I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a time of great racial polarization. So I don't see this sort of thing through rose-colored glasses. If I watch a videotape of a couple of black kids attacking a white kid while other black kids cheer, I have the same gut-feeling as did Sax.

Of course, the politically correct thing is to say otherwise. "Racial? What makes you think it's racial? We just don't know."

Without putting too fine a point on this, that would certainly be the politically proper response in Belleville. After all, that city has a certain history. The CBS show "60 Minutes" once followed up on a Belleville News-Democrat series that detailed police mistreatment of blacks. Then there was a lawsuit about the city's hiring practices.

These days, the city likes to project an image of racial tolerance. In fact, Sax works for the city's first African-American chief.

So giving his honest response to the question about motivation took some courage.

Interestingly enough, Mayor Mark Eckert is blaming the media. He told a reporter from the St. Louis Beacon that Sax "made a mistake. He let the media squeeze out an opinion instead of saying we don't have all the facts."

But before we conclude that race was not an issue on the bus, let me ask this: If white students had assaulted a black student on the bus and other white students had cheered, would the politically correct response be to dismiss the racial angle? I think not.

That is not to say that Sax and I were 100 percent accurate in our initial assessments. Nobody can say with certainty what is in somebody else's head. That's why I have always opposed hate-crime legislation. It is not just that as a straight, white guy, I am not in a protected class. I simply believe we should punish the act, and not the motivation for the act. It's easier that way.

Besides, I can't think of anything more confusing than race. I remember when my son was at Clayton High School. The state was reducing reimbursement to county schools that participated in the voluntary desegregation program. That led to talk that Clayton should pull out of the program. That led to some students organizing a walkout to show support for the program.

I have always had misgivings about the desegregation program. I think it has devastated the city schools by removing the kids whose parents are motivated enough to sign them up for the program. Furthermore, I think the money would be better spent on computers and teachers rather than transportation to and from the county.

At any rate, I asked my son if he participated in the walkout. He said he did not. He said he left class and went to the school gym to shoot baskets. I asked who was there. Mostly the kids from the city, he said.

So rather than protest racism, he was playing basketball with a group of black students. You see how confusing things can get?

Perhaps things are especially confusing right now. We are in the first year of the Barack Obama administration. Does this mean we have become colorblind?

Absolutely, say many people who e-mail me. These are the people who have been protesting various of Obama's initiatives.

They are very concerned about the deficit. I have never written, or even suggested, that their concern has anything to do with race, but I have written that their timing seems odd. Nine years ago, the last president inherited a budget in surplus and immediately took us into the red. Nobody marched then.

But when Obama inherited a crumbling economy and a financial system on the verge of collapse, suddenly deficit spending became an issue.

Frankly, I think that most of the opposition to Obama is driven by partisan fervor rather than racial animus. But is some of this driven by race?

You can guess what I think. I grew up on the south side of Chicago.