Sometimes, it's easier to see the full implications of some of our race-related social problems by looking at them not directly but with our peripheral vision. Sometimes it's the ripples that tell the story and not the rock that set them in motion.

For instance, it's not nearly as difficult to joust with one's political opponents about our incarceration rate and its disproportionate effects on the poor and racial minorities as it is to hear young, black comediennes do heartrending but hilarious schticks about what it's like to have every male member of your family in jail. "That's why I keep my hair so short," jokes Angelique Cope. "Somebody's got to be the man of the family."

Or to read a book called The Prisoner's Wife. Written by asha bandele, whose husband is serving a long sentence, the book is part memoir and part "how to" for the millions of family members with incarcerated loved ones. "Keep his picture prominent. Send him his children's pictures and copies of schoolwork. Aim for balance in the parenting roles."

That last piece of advice is perhaps the most wistfully pathetic I have ever read. What other civilized nation needs such "art"?

Some of her advice is dead right, as in, "Set aside a special fund for phone calls." Nationwide, departments of corrections make hundreds of millions from prisoners' collect calls home (the only kind they can make). The states award mutually lucrative monopoly contracts to communications companies that set the price for inmates' calls at well above market price. States then receive commissions of 20 to 63 percent. This, some say, amounts to an unfair, regressive tax on the mostly poor family members of prisoners. Tough, respond corrections officials, our budgets are insufficient.

Illinois prisoners recently lost an appeal which charged that the high price of calls violated their families' free speech rights. On the other hand, though, Troy Campbell, president of the North American Communications Group, has been indicted on graft charges stemming from the alleged scamming of millions from collect-call systems he oversaw in prisons around the nation.

Even the "ripples" that are clearly either blameworthy or illegal shed meaningful light on the dizzyingly difficult issues we face and the many strands of sociopolitical conflict they encompass.

An African illegal alien turned her impending deportation into a cause celebre taken up by the likes of Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, members of Congress and the former first lady. But the "Queen Mother" of her tribe who would be brutally circumcised when returned and found not to be a virgin turned out to have assumed someone's else identity and was merely trying to avoid returning to life in a poor, futureless country. Worse, the identity she assumed was of a fellow citizen who had been afraid to report her passport stolen and lived every day here with the fear of her own deportation back to a poor, futureless country.

The Denny's restaurant chain has been reeling since 1994, when it settled a $ 46 million class-action lawsuit filed by hundreds of black customers, to at least some of whom it had refused service. It's been easy pickings for unscrupulous blacks ever since. Fed up, it began its own strategy of massive resistance. When two black Miamians filed suit last year, Denny's lawyers produced the restaurant videotape.

Let's just say that the story line was less Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge than a bunch of greedy children staring at a locked cookie jar. The plaintiffs' lawyer swiftly withdrew. Stubbornly committed to the noble cause of civil rights, the plaintiffs hired another lawyer, who had a similar reaction to viewing that video his clients had told him nothing about.

At the height of the 1980s crack wars, black businessmen went door to door in violent neighborhoods with tales (and photos) of innocents killed in the cross-fire; they were selling children's burial policies to terrified black parents. In the '00s, two new trends: "articles" on the danger of racial profiling that turn out to be sales jobs for pre-paid criminal-defense insurance policies. Why pay for an ad when you can use the white bogeyman to scare clients into your office?

Also, reparations scams. Blacks are conning their brothers with enticements of $ 43,000 to $ 500,000 tax rebates, all for the low, low price of a $ 50 to $ 100 "filing fee." Cunning to the last, these con men caution the filers not to contact the IRS because "they don't want you to know about this."

Obviously, hucksters read the papers religiously. Soon, I suppose, we'll start seeing scams involving phony black churches (like Flip Wilson's Church of What's Happening Now) bilking the government out of faith-based-initiative money. Or a[acute] la the human genome project, phony DNA information purporting to identify blacks' ancestral African homelands. Of course, all will have been chiefs or Queen Mothers and will receive an ornately scripted certificate (suitable for framing) "proving" their royal lineage. Just call the 1-800 number and have your credit cards ready.