By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Let me preface this by saying that it happens all the time, and usually I let it slide. I don't want to embarrass the speaker, or I don't want to hurt a friendship, or sometimes I'm too weary for a fight. Often I'll do that split-second evaluation and decide the intention wasn't to hurt.

But this was different.

I walked into a furniture store last week, purse in hand, looking to buy. Across the street at a service station, there was quite a commotion going on. There were about a dozen uniformed officers and police cars parked all around. At the center of the fuss, a young man sat on the cement with his hands behind his back as though handcuffed. He sat against a black sports utility vehicle and the police were asking him questions and looking through the car.

As I was looking at the furniture, a man came from the back room of the store. He asked me if I was looking for anything in particular, and I said something about the store having lots of pretty things I would love to have in my house.

Then he says, "Quite a commotion across the street, huh?"

I said, "Yes, it looks like they caught some guy trying to steal a car or something."

He says, "Yeah, and you ever notice how those guys are always named Souza or Medeiros?"

I did that split-second evaluation, and this time, I just couldn't let it go. This guy wasn't joking — though a joke like that also would be inappropriate to a total stranger. He was trying to bond with me in a "you and me, we're better than THOSE people" kind of way.

I said, "How dare you. You don't know who I am or what I am, only that I'm a potential customer."

His response was, "No, really. When you think about it, they all are."

I told him what I thought of him and I walked out.

What bothered me most wasn't the cavalier way this man proclaimed that all car thieves are Portuguese. It would have bothered me just as much if he had picked the names Tanaka and Nakamoto, or Lum and Wong. What bothered me wasn't even the affirmation that bigotry is alive and well in Honolulu, because that sad fact is hardly news to anyone who has spent time here.

What got me angry was knowing that I was going to write about this, and afterward my e-mail and voice mail would be filled with angry rebuttals telling me to lighten up, I just don't get it; something must be wrong with me for taking offense at something like that. Or worse, that there are people who would agree with his assessment.

Here in this "land of aloha," in the melting pot of the Pacific, where we cultivate a public relations image of "we all get along," there are still legions of bigots who will fight, foaming at the mouth, for the right to be so careless and so horribly wrong.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.