Yes, Count me as another person who is sick of people playing the race card.

The word "racist" has lost it's meaning due to overuse, in much the same way antibiotics lose their punch when prescribed for every little sniffle. It used to sting when I was accused of racism, but now I simply brush the label off and go on about my business. It's meaningless.

When your only tool is a hammer, everything problem looks like a nail...

When your only defense is to cry racism, every problem looks like racism...

She said "tasteless", not "racist".

I'm sorry, but what exactly is the "history" of the afro?

It's not like Claudia Schiffer was in black-face. Naomi Campell and Opra straighten their hair. Isn't that also racist (or tasteless and offensive) by this definition?

Seriously Amy, you don't look a day over 30.

Thanks -- I used to be able to read a matchbook cover across the street. I really miss that.

PS For a cheap remedy, I use eyeglassdirect.com to fill my prescription ($35, I think, plus $4.95 shipping). They have frames, but I sent frames for them to fill -- $14.99 Borghese reading glasses from CVS. I get compliments on them all the time. Oh yeah, and I can see. Especially important while driving.

It took me one minute with Google to find this now classic example of the pseudo-intellectual accusation that everyone is prejudiced, but only Whites are Racist. That is the definition!

This is asymmetric, intellectual warfare. The people who want to be good are falling for propaganda designed to control them. Socialists offer to increase the power of the state over them as an expiation of their sins. This only works because they are already good people, with the usual amount of anxiety about the world.

Sorry about the length. This standard argument deserves to be seen in detail to be opposed and laughed at.

By Caleb Rosado, Department of Urban Studies, Eastern University, Philadelphia, PA [edited, emphasis added]

The Undergirding Factor is POWER, Toward an Understanding of Prejudice and Racism

Prejudice by itself does not constitute racism, however. Neither does power by itself. But when people use their position of power, be it political or institutional, to reinforce their prejudices and to enforce them so that as a result of their racial prejudices the life chances, rights and opportunities of others are limited, the result is racism.

Racism is prejudice plus power. While all people can be prejudiced, only those who have power are really racist. African Americans, Latinos, Asians and American Indians (the powerless in American society) can be and often are most prejudiced toward Whites on an individual basis, but they are not racists at the structural, institutional level.

Within this understanding of racism, to be a racist you have to possess two things: 1) socioeconomic power to force others to do what you desire even if they don't want to, and 2), the justification of this power abuse by an ideology of biological supremacy.

What often is described as racism in society today, is really nothing more than prejudice and discrimination. While a Black or Latino person, through the use of a gun and/or intimidation, can force a White person to do as he (as an individual) desires, this is an individual act of aggression, not a socially structured power arrangement.

At present, only Whites have that kind of power, reinforced by a belief in an ideology of supremacy, both of which constitute the basis of racism in America today.

Summary: When a Black man fears a White man for being white, that is prejudice. When a White man fears a Black man for being black, that is Racism (requiring the intervention of the government). This is the accepted Liberal view, enforced by the government and taught at respectable universities.

Not being racist is racist.

So if a black person calls me a honkey or a cracker, they are not racist? Or if they say that I can't do something because I am "white"? Hypocracy at it's finest.

Wow, I didn't realize that certain hairstyles were reserved for people of certain races. I guess I'd better go brush up on the U.S. Code before my next haircut. I wonder if it's legal for a middle-age white guy to shave his head?

Andrew, thanks for that...I think... The problem, of course, is that the oh-so-oppressed minorities are in truth racists against themselves. By attributing every negative outcome, every perceived slight to racism, they effectively repress themselves.

As Jerry Pournelle puts it in his writings: Back in the 1950s he wanted to see a color-blind society, and the whites called him racist. Now, more than 50 years later, he still wants to see a color-blind society, and the blacks call him racist.

I quoted above from this link:

The Undergirding Factor is POWER, Toward an Understanding of Prejudice and Racism
By Caleb Rosado, Department of Urban Studies, Eastern University, Philadelphia, PA

The saddest ironies accompany this issue. Black-administered governments are still failures, the crime rate for some categories is ten times that of other ethnic groups...

...and it's always somebody else's fault.

I wonder if it's legal for a middle-age white guy to shave his head?

You must be a skinhead -- why would a balding guy shave his head otherwise. :-p

I'm sorry, but what exactly is the "history" of the afro?

It was the hairstyle of the rebellious youth, just as long hair on boys was for the white kids. Prior to that, it was hours in the salon for relaxed or combed styles. I read an interesting book (whose title escapes me just now) about the origins of the elaborate braided styles ladies wear. In many African tribal communities of earlier centuries, to wear one's hair natural was a sign of a period of grief, or insanity.

This whole Schiffer kerfluffle brings to mind a picture in the Diana Vreeland book Allure. Vreeland got hold of a huge diamond from Winston in between private owners and they photographed it for the magazine. She says they got the best hand in Paris for modeling it (a Swedish girl), only it looked crass, so they painted the model's hand solid black.
I wonder what they'd make of this today.

Vreeland:

There're never veins of precious stones where white people come from. Isn't it true? This is the idea I came up with: not to use a black hand but to paint the white hand we already had -totally artificially- with black shoe-black.

The fact that the picture was totally artificial did it. If it had been a white hand it would have looked like 1925. And if it had been on a natural black hand, however beautiful, it would have been...banal.

Gah. Can't even claim under-caffeination. "The magazine" was, of course Vogue, under Vreeland's direction back then in 1970.

I guess Ms. Rhule never saw the 2004 movie "White Chicks" with Shawn and Marlon Wayans? Or the 1986 movie "Soul Man" with C. Thomas Howell?

They can both attend the next affirmative action/cultural sensitivity seminar in my place. I'm too old to care.