Everything is racist.

Yesterday I wrote about how white people being overweight is racist because being fat and beautiful is a Black thing.

Today I give you the L.A. Times’ take: driving your car is racist, at least if you live in L.A.

Not that everybody driving a car is polluting the air. White people are polluting the air, says the headline.

Pollution has a color, and while it may be brown in the air, it is White in spirit.

Like many Angelenos, I spend a lot of time behind the wheel of my car. I drive from my Westside apartment to Dodger Stadium near downtown and farther east to hike in the San Gabriel Mountains. I take the 405 Freeway north to the San Fernando Valley to see friends, or occasionally south to the L.A. Times office — or to the airport, where I grow my carbon footprint even further.

So I couldn’t help but consider my own complicity while reading a new study from USC researchers, finding that Angelenos who drive more tend to be exposed to less air pollution — and Angelenos who drive less tend to be exposed to more pollution.

Sammy Roth should spend more time at home. With the lights off. And off his computer. And make sure he doesn’t use air conditioning in the L.A. summers. Or hike. Or fly.

Because he is complicit in destroying the environment with his carbon footprint and killing people of color.

It may sound like a paradox, but it’s not. It’s a function of the racism that shaped this city and its suburbs, and continues to influence our daily lives — and a stark reminder of the need for climate solutions that benefit everyone.

My colleague Terry Castleman wrote about the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Urban Studies. The core finding is that for every 1% increase in miles driven to and from work by people who live in a particular part of L.A. County, there’s an estimated 0.62% decrease in the lung-damaging “fine particulate matter” to which those Angelenos are exposed.

How is that possible? I asked the study’s lead author, Geoff Boeing, a professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

He told me it largely comes down to the shameful history of Los Angeles County’s low-income communities of color being torn apart to make way for freeways — a history that has been extensively documented by The Times. Today, many residents of the county’s whiter, more affluent neighborhoods — who were often able to keep highways out of their own backyards — commute to work through lower-income Black and Latino neighborhoods bisected by the 10, 110 and 105 freeways and more.

“It’s not like commuters are coming in and shopping in those communities, patronizing restaurants,” Boeing said. “They’re just driving through to get from one side of the city to the other.”

I hate to tell you this, but there is a reason why commuters aren’t coming in and shopping in those communities, and it has little to do with the racial makeup of the residents, and everything to do with how unwelcome they are to visit and how unsafe many parts of L.A. for either the residents or visitors.

I would be willing to wager that Sammy Roth, the guilt-ridden author of this piece, probably avoids these areas of L.A. as well. Instead, he drives his car to hike in the San Gabriel mountains.

Hiking, by the way, is also racist. Sammy needs some racial sensitivity training. Sammy can learn how to be an antiracist hiker at the American Hiking Society.

The Sierra Club, too, tells us that hiking is unbearably White:

Do the work, Sammy, do the work. Quit writing about how White people suck and get out there and be a good little anti-racist!

I am being mean to our L.A. Times writer not because he, in particular, deserves it, but because each and every one of these self-absorbed liberals virtue-signaling their way through life is a waste of talent and time. Their talent–and you don’t get to write for the L.A. Times without at least some talent–and our time, because we have to live with all the stupidities imposed upon us by people who take this sort of crap seriously.

Nobody, except perhaps Ed Begley Jr. who tends to walk his talk, changes their own behavior while decrying everybody else’s. Our intrepid reporter is exposing his feelings of guilt to the world for driving, inspiring others to pass policies to remedy a largely nonexistent problem, yet he will continue to drive while feeling good that he said his piece.

If any of these tedious SJWs cared about POC in Los Angeles or anywhere else they would be out fighting for school choice or at least accountability in the public schools. Air pollution isn’t the largest problem facing POC in LA or elsewhere, it is the lack of opportunity to climb the economic ladder caused by impossibly bad public schools.

Schools are more determined to trans the kids and bring in drag queens than to teach reading, writing, and math. They teach anger and despair, which have negative value, rather than thinking and writing skills.

If they could climb the economic ladder, they might even move to the suburbs and take up hiking.