"I don't want to hire a black person to clean my house."

I glanced around the Thai restaurant where my friend and I were having dinner, hoping that no one had heard her. Now, this was not an oh-my-god-my-friend-is-a-racist moment. Although her skin is white and her upbringing privileged, she has devoted her academic life as a historian to understanding black-white relations. She's written eloquent paeans to the Black Panthers and eagerly purged her speech of all racially offensive imagery, from black sheep to dark horses.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I don't want to engage in that paradigm. My father hired a black housekeeper, my grandfather had a black maid, and I'm not going to be party to that tradition."

On leave from her first year of teaching at a prestigious East Coast university, my friend was eager to tell me how exciting her new life was -- and how indescribably filthy her new apartment had become. After years of rooming together in graduate school, I scarcely needed the sordid details. Midpoint through a treatise on hairballs and mold, I interrupted.

"I'll buy you some Ajax if you promise to use it."

"I just don't have time. I work from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day."

"Then hire someone."

"I couldn't find anyone."

Her university is located in an economically troubled town plagued by unemployment. "How hard can it be?"

And that's when, with a wistful sigh, she informed me of her historically-minded hiring practices. As I scanned the roomful of white faces, I imagined an African-American housekeeper overhearing our conversation, after having spent a day making fruitless applications at domestic service agencies.

"But what if the person really needed the job?" I asked.

"Sheila, hiring a black person to clean your house isn't going to solve the real problem. Sometimes helping the individual hurts the overall cause. I'm holding out for more structural change."

Next page: Let a thousand hairballs bloom