James Hannaham writes on Salon about a story reported on FiveThirtyEight in which an election canvasser goes to a house in Western Pennsylvania and asks who the people are voting for. The answer:

We're voting for the n***er.

(Salon spelled the word out, but FiveThirtyEight didn't and neither will I. I'm sure you know what it is.)

FiveThirtyEight later reported a similar conversation in Virginia.

These stories sound apocryphal, but I believe them, partly because it would be nice to think even bigots recognize which candidate has their best interests at heart, but mostly because of an experience I had in 1979.

I was running a legal services office in Wichita Falls, Texas, and happened to be up at the front desk when an older white couple came in. "We're here to sign our wills," they told me.

All the lawyers in the office did wills, so I asked, "Who's your lawyer?"

"That colored boy you have back there."

I didn't admonish them. By their standards, they were being polite -- they didn't use the n-word and when they grew up, "colored" was the nice term. And despite their casual racism, they had no problem having their wills drawn up by a black lawyer.

But I didn't tell the lawyer what they said, either.

It will be nice if human beings ever become civilized enough to stop calling people names based on the color of their skin or their ethnic heritage or social class, not to mention gender. But in the meantime, I'll settle for people who will vote for a black man even if they won't be polite about it.

It may be a baby step, but it's still progress.