I moved to Salt Lake City long before the Lost Boys of Sudan got here, when the black population was well below 1 percent.

The only cities I knew then were New York and Boston. Yet, against the advice of friends and family, I came out here by my black self on a Greyhound bus to be with the boyfriend I had dated in college who happens to be white. Yes, I did.

It's the part of my story I usually avoid telling. That, and the fact that it took him two years to finally tell me that one of the reasons he chose Utah was that he thought I'd never move here. I'll never live it down with my family, and can only hope it won't be on my gravestone when I'm gone.

The youngest child in an achieving family, I had grown up around media professionals, executives and high-ranking military. Race had never played a part in my dating choices back East. If I met a guy who was cute and interesting, I didn't care about the color of his skin.

So I arrived here na ve and in love, a dangerous combination. I didn't even have the good sense to be scared. The lack of racial diversity only made me more determined to find some of my people. So after leaving the bus station, I looked up and down the streets in The Avenues, where I would be staying, and I looked in the grocery store. And I began to wonder. Could it possibly be that I was the only black person in the state?

When I finally switched on the TV, I was excited to see Karl Malone doing a commercial. Too bad I couldn't understand a word he said. Great.

Feeling trapped in a time warp, I had everything to learn about how Utahns socialize. I couldn't miss the weird ways they dealt with gender and race. I noticed that men and women were less likely to be good friends than in other places I'd lived. A co-worker who moved here from Vermont compared it to a junior high gym dance, with the guys lined up on one side, the girls on the other.

I also had to figure out Mormon pop culture. It came wrapped in a whole different language, full of abbreviations - FHE, LDS, RM - and words that substituted for swearing - "flippin'" and "gaaaaaall!" How could I know, without being told, the meaning of "temple-worthy" and "funeral potatoes."

Looking back, I would have appreciated a billboard clearly stating what I was in for: "Not Married? Not Mormon? Not White? Good Luck!"

So many people have asked me since, "Why did you stay?" Well, I had moved here against everyone's advice, so leaving and admitting defeat was not an option for me. Besides, I had always been able to see value in people and situations that other people might not see. I figured staying would be a true test of that gift.

I looked around and figured out that Salt Lake might be a good place to break into media. So I started out delivering an entertainment newspaper. One week I delivered it with a severely sprained ankle and got hired in the office on the spot. The hours were long but I learned a lot. Next came TV Master Control, radio disc jockey and TV news. At times I was holding down two or three jobs.

Race kept coming up in unexpected ways. As a classic rock DJ, I would have male listeners call in, saying stuff like, "You have a great voice. Are you a blonde or a redhead?" It had never crossed my mind that in hearing my voice they would picture me as white. When I worked live events, they didn't try to hide their shock and disappointment.

Once, as a DJ for a bubble-gum station, I showed up to surprise a listener at his job. He had been calling me to chat and to ask me to play a song for him while he did his homework. Now, seeing me, he looked very uncomfortable. Finally, I asked him what was wrong. I'll never forget how he looked when he said, "I'm just really bummed that you're black."

I was stunned, because such comments almost always had come from someone older. Now I had learned that racism in Utah knows no generation gap. I remember barely making it to my car before the tears started streaming down my face.

At times when I think that race relations in Utah are evolving, something happens to make the peace train in my head come to a screeching halt. It's bad enough that state Sen. Chris Buttars famously referred to a bill as a "black baby" and "a dark ugly thing." Worse was his self-pitying reaction to the fallout he'd created. He claimed that a "hate lynch mob" was after him (as opposed to a loving lynch mob).

The fact that Buttars still lives in a segregated world is, of course, his problem. But when he spews racism, suffers no consequences and runs for re-election, he only hurts white Utahns who are not racist and are tired of the reputation.

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* TANIA PAXTON works as an in-house camera person in local TV news and as a freelance field producer for national TV outlets.