re: #303 garhighway

I think there are a lot of hypocrites on this point. There are a lot of people that, in public and on the record, will say the right thing about racism. But it is my sad experience that many of those same people will tell the racist joke if they think the coast is clear.

I suspect (in the absence of reliable data, I freely admit) that many of the tea party people are like that. Most will never say the offensive thing in public, but behind closed doors I suspect the conversation is quite different. But the overt racists with the hateful signs are relatively rare.

I would very much like to be wrong about this, but I don’t think that we as a society have really progressed THAT much.

No, you have. As Avenue Q says, everyone’s a little bit racist. It’s one of those things that makes us human - a tiny primal suspicion of those who look different, or an inclination to make jokes about the stereotyped differences. It is simply a part of who we are.

Does that make it okay to go on racist tirades behind closed doors? No. Does it make it okay to continually bring race to the fore as a divisive issue, and use it to attack your political opponents? No. Does it make it okay to make racially offensive jokes? No.

Then again, there’s a world of difference between having a non-PC chuckle about Indian cab drivers, and lynching blacks for being uppity. There’s a world of difference between grumbling about not being able to understand inner-city Ebonics, and Whites Only signs at counters. The West has come a very long way. America, and the English-speaking Western world in general, has a very small racism problem in comparison to the whole rest of the world. A relatively small number of backwards retreads will continue to make news, but this is the fault of the sensationalist media, and the huddled masses who eagerly lap it up.

The constant drum of racial dogwhistles put out by the Conservative cult media are a small noise. The bald-faced racism used by Breitbart and the like to attack their political opponents plays to a relatively small audience, on the national scale. It’s a playground moment - ‘So you called me a racist? Oh yeah, well you are too!’ - which we see played out every day on our national media, and even on this blog.