As our nation approaches its 233th birthday, I sit here with heavy heart. We Americans have had over two centuries to make this nation a land where all men are created equal, but to my immense shame this still isn't true.

I speak, of course, about racial discrimination. Of a judicial system that assumes, much as we try to deny it, that white people just aren't as smart as blacks.

This is absolutely preposterous, you self-proclaimed patriots cry. It's ridiculous! How could the most powerful country in the world treat the white minority with such disrespect? Alas, facts cannot be disputed. Yet another travesty of justice occurred just the other day.

After years of helping run a major cocaine ring out of his University of Vermont fraternity house, white student Christopher Duncan was sentenced to absolutely zero time in jail. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute the drug, but his fancy-pants big-city lawyer double-crossed him and got him off just about scot-free.

How? By describing his client as too "stupid" to know what he was doing. Judge William Sessions III fell hook, line and sinker for the demeaning description, and in a decision that must have left Benjamin Franklin spinning in his grave, he agreed the white college senior was "naive" and just a "bit player" in the conspiracy.

Yes, this paragon of the legal system apparently believed that a white college student two weeks away from graduating was too dumb to realize he was selling drugs. And rather than facing the honorable sentence of jail time, the lad is hit with a patronizing decree of house arrest accompanied by the irking slur of naivete.

How those words must sting Mr. Duncan's rich white parents! Their pride and joy, "naive"! The president of his fraternity, the son of an attorney, a "bit player!" How they must have cringed when the judge said "This is not the kind of professional drug conspiracy I'm used to seeing here." If I were in their shoes, I'd probably have done something rash -- because if my children ever ran a drug ring, it'd be at least as good as anything run by the blacks.

Now picture, in astounding contrast, the black adolescent facing this same fate. He'd be laughed out of the courthouse if he tried claiming he was dumb! No judge would fall for that. He'd hand down the minimum sentence of ten years and send the boy to join all the other intelligent blacks in jail. Imagine how people would scream bloody murder if this lad was sprung from the courthouse with disparaging stereotypes in his ears!

Still, I know the world moves eternally on a path toward righteousness, as befitting God's plan. Call me a dreamer, call me a cock-eyed optimist, but this Fourth of July I'll be watching the fireworks with a hand over my heart, because I know that one day this will all be history.

One day our court system will realize that rich white college students are just as smart as poor black high-school dropouts.

One day our judicial system will know that when our paler children drive to Rhode Island to buy ten thousand dollars worth of cocaine, then break it up into baggies and sell it to their fraternity brothers, they frequently sense that they're committing some kind of crime.

One day our democratic system will put our white progeny behind bars, where they belong, instead of hiding them away in a cushy job where the scarlet letter of innuendo stains their Armani suits.

And on that day, I'll join all the proud black fathers as I too get to smuggle a shiv and some smokes to my son at Rikers Island instead of just wiring him another thousand to blow in the secret shame that is Myrtle Beach.