[bk1000]

"There is also a subset of FReepers who have appointed themselves the racism police and will hit abuse if a post strikes them as having a slight hint of racism."

I continue to wonder why the abstract fear of 'the R word'.
Everybody is racist to some degree, some more than others, but anybody who claims to 'not have a racist bone in their body' is lying.

[smartin]

I'm not racist, I hate everybody.

</sarcasm>

[wideawake]

Perhaps it's ebcause the definition of racism has metastasized to a ridiculous degree.

A racist used to be a person who had a conscious animosity toward entire ethnic groups and races and considered them inferior and deserving of unfair treatment and social opprobrium.

Nowadays it apparently means anyone who experiences the slightest discomfort around people of a different ethnicity.

If an introverted 50 year old white guy gets onto a subway car occupied by four 20 year old black guys who are having a spirited, jovial conversation around him, he's going to naturally feel uncomfortable in a way that he wouldn't if he got into a subway car filled with introverted 50 year old white guys.

That's reality, not racism. Telling that guy that he's evil because he feels awkward and out of his comfort zone is ridiculous and counterproductive.

[ichabod1]

Maybe we should take a page out of the bolshevik (left's) playbook and if accused of racism say "No We're not, We're culturally oriented." That should satisfy them since we're invoking the almighty Culture, but we would know we were invoking our OWN culture, whatever culture that happened to be for any individual, conservative, We would hope.

"It is the Way of Our People."

[GSlob]

"Everybody is racist to some degree, some more than others, but anybody who claims to 'not have a racist bone in their body' is lying."
I'm afraid your argument is rather fuzzy, to the point of being wrong. Like any other worldview, racism has a complex structure. By definition, there must be a minimal set of its components necessary to constitute the worldview. From here it necessarily follows that the possession of an incomplete minimal set does not make one a racist -thus there can be no such thing as "racist bone". For illustration, to be a racist one needs to be a sentient being, among other things. But just being sentient is not enough.