re: #718 Killgore Trout

This is just a thought, so bear with me (I’m stealing from the company, so my thoughts might not be fully jelled).

First, I find the photo to be in very poor taste and sophomoric. It does not reflect well on the intellect of the person who created it or posted it.

Two possibilities:
First- If we are in a truly post-racial society, many would say that such photos are an anachronism— a bad vestige of the past and better forgotten. I think that would be the majority of folks.

Second—Others, perhaps disingenuously, would argue that since we are post-racial, then all forms of racial slurs would be fair-game in the public arena. The rationale would be that since we are all looking beyond race, then why, then, should anyone be offended by the use of a term or an image that should no longer carry any “racial” connotation. This is akin the the constant use of profanity to the point where it is part of the accepted vernacular and is used by all, irrespective of the connotation.

Part of me would like to think that this might come to be (though I don’t like cursing except to emphasize a point) and a white man could use, in an academic sense, “the” worst pejorative to the ears of an African-American (or other words with alliterative similarities) without fear of being excoriated. Sense we do not yet live in that world, then the First posit aptly describes where we are as a society.

Gotta get back down into the mines…
Later, comrades!