As a child I always hated Captain Planet.

I mean the green mullet was pretty cool and all but the show was terrible. What always bothered me was that the villains made no sense whatsoever. The villains were always out to cause all this pollution and destruction just for kicks.

Even as a child I was aware that this really wasn't how the world worked. Pollution stems from a system that favors consumption over conservation. Pollution isn't some evil blight highlighted for us by poorly dressed mutants.

It's a simple side effect of capitalism and the way that we as consumers in the industrial world choose to live our life. Racism has evolved along similar lines, but I'm not sure many people have noticed. I don't see overt racism that often, and maybe that's simply because I'm a white kid living in State College with no black friends. Perhaps it lurks somewhere just out of sight. I couldn't tell you.

What I am disturbed by is the way we treat the poor. I think what many people perceive as racism is actually a question of class discrimination. I don't think our society treats minorities unfairly -- I think it treats the poor unfairly. Of course history and politics has created an underclass that is disproportionately overwhelmingly nonwhite.

This is hardly new ground. I live with a sociology major who has stacks and stacks of books on the subject. What bothers me is how we ignore our part in creating these cycles and societal patterns -- just like we have for so long with pollution.

I ran across an interesting example the other day. You may be unaware of it, but I am currently the target of some kind of turfgrass e-mail campaign. I made a joke in a column a couple weeks back and now I receive a letter every couple days informing me of how wrong I was to make fun this "important major."

One letter told me I should do some research before making snide comments about the explosive and fast-paced world of turfgrass science.

Frankly, I'm too lazy to ever be engaged in any kind of research, but one of my friends thought it would be good for a laugh. After poking around on the Internet for an hour or two he stumbled across what is possibly the single most amazing course I've ever seen offered at Penn State: Spanish 901A (Spanish for Golf Course Turfgrass Management). Course description: "Students will learn basic vocabulary and phrases to assign, follow up, correct and praise golf course maintenance tasks. Students will also learn phrases to develop rapport and make small conversation with Spanish-speaking staff."

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but when I read this course description I conjure an image of a Trent Lott in a polo and khakis yelling at an alien worker to "pick up that rake" en Espanol.

Pragmatically I don't think you can really argue with the concept of the course. Take a look at an study about labor practices and you'll find that large portions of our manual and agriculture labor is handled by illegal aliens trying to scratch out a better life in America. Being able to communicate with them would be an asset to any manager.

What bothers me is that we're so blase about this practice. Somewhere in the back of our minds we all know that our lifestyle is supported by steel made with slave labor, Nikes made in sweatshops and a host of domestic services provided by unregulated labor. I just wish we had the decency to be ashamed of it.

In the interest of full disclosure I should admit that these practices scare me for poorly selfish reasons as well. The mantra of free markets and small government is driving us back toward an era of haves and have-nots.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans rose by 129 percent in the last 26 years, the bottom fifth rose 4 percent and the middle fifth rose 15 percent. More and more people are being left out in the cold and the only way to reverse the trend is to seriously reconsider how much faith we have in the free market.

Of course our other option is another cartoon, but if this one is anything like Captain Planet, it will do more harm than good in terms of educating the masses.

But if the idea were to get off the ground, I'm thinking a teenage girl with a blue mohawk who battles waspy business men with a magical boomerang.