Driving While Black in California

"I know why you stopped me, officer."


We here in California have narrowly dodged another bullet from the crazed gunmen up in Sacramento. As they say, what begins in California spreads to the rest of the country. So guess what the new innovation is in the Golden State?

Cool paint colors for our cars.

Yes, the California Air Resources Board (whatever that is), recently decided that all our cars had to be painted an acceptable color. You see, they decided that cars that have a dark color (black specifically) were causing greenhouse gases or more carbon footprints, or something like that. That's because dark colors absorb heat causing the temperature to rise in a dark painted car. That means more use of the air conditioner, which in turn means polar ice caps melting and dead polar bears floating down Main Street.

That's right.

On the other hand, white cars reflect heat thus lessening the need for the air conditioner, and thus, saving the planet.

As a result, our government busy bodies have tasked our best scientific minds to come up with a so-called "cool color", which, while not exactly white, would satisfy the selfish cravings of right-wing extremists who insist on driving a dark-colored car and which would still reflect the heat, thus reducing the need for the air conditioner, and thus, saving the planet.

For the Children.


Unfortunately, the result of all the testing came up with a color that resembled something like pastoral Mother Earth cow pie brown.

"Hey Merle, this looks like a cool color for my pick-up."


Plus, now that word has leaked out about this proposed change and ban on cars painted black, the resultant public laughter and derision (lots of "driving while black" jokes) has caused the Air Resources Board to crawl back into their government pods and assure us that it's not really going to happen.

Just for now, anyway.

But watch out America. As I learned years ago when I bought a Volvo in Sweden and had it shipped to the States, there are certain US standards that must be built into imported cars. And when it comes to emissions and windshield reflections and all that stuff, California has the strictest standards, therefore Volvos for export to the US are built according to California standards.

So for all you other 49-staters who happen to go overseas and order a BMW or Volvo (or maybe even a Fiat/Chrysler) in the next couple of years, think twice before you order black.

(I'm not making this up, folks.)