EQUALITY WATCH : Good Book

America has seen a lot of how-to books. There have even been books on how to write how-to books. But there’s room for one more, this one by Tamera Trotter and Joycelyn Allen. Why another? Just consider its self-explanatory title: “Talking Justice: 602 Ways to Build and Promote Racial Harmony.”

Trotter, a mental health assistant, and Allen, an Orange County deputy probation counselor, wrote the book in the desperate need to glean something positive from the 1992 Los Angeles riots. “When I saw the city going up in flames . . . I felt hopeless,” Trotter told The Times’ City Times section.

She and her friend Allen agreed to write a book to teach people how to deal with those from other cultures. The book points out how ignorant and/or cruel remarks and actions can hurt, and how they can be avoided. Like No. 376: “Do not teach your children that a person with blond hair and blue eyes is the epitome of beauty. There is a range of beauty from alabaster to ebony.” This suggestion sprang from an experience of Trotter’s, who remembered listening, incredulously, to a co-worker telling a Latino boy that he would be “good-looking, if (he) had blond hair and blue eyes.”

The ways listed by Trotter and Allen draw much from common sense and the Golden Rule. But recent reports of threats and bombings by white supremacists show that there can never be enough help out there in promoting racial harmony. It’s much needed--especially here, especially now. The book is available through R&E; Publishers of Saratoga, Calif.