White trick-or-treaters in blackface: C/D?

Heavens, no.

Air America (used to?) air a commercial insinuating that not allowing a white kid into a black frat would be wrong because any form of discrimination is bad, yet another case of blacks huddling into separatist comfort zones.

Because they always break the canes during step routines?

Obv.

YOU MIGHT'VE MISSED THIS ON ESPN.COM

http://search.espn.go.com/keyword/search?searchString=mike%20tyson&page=multimedia&multimediaCount=15

because white people don't need to be liked by Asians

RACISM AT HALLOWEEN!

My friend (of indian descent) went as a grand-wizard. He got my other friend's mum to make the white hood for him.

np: vioxx ~ waterfalls of ecstacy (2 bad mice remix)

Am I right, folks?

It's really, really dangerous to start thinking "racism" is solely limited to people who actively hate certain other races and take active steps to be mean to them; this describes like a really tiny portion of the history of racism, which is almost always more about having particular expectations of people or ideas about them and their status based on race. Whether those ideas are "conscious" or "ignorant" is a pretty vague spectrum based on how much people have sat down and thought about the nuances of their belief systems -- i.e., something really, really hard to judge without mind-meld technology.

i have never had a racial slur directed to me, though i'm sure that in various confrontations some people may have regarded my actions as having to do with being white. i have been with friends who have been racially slurred in my presence and it is indeed an incredibly awkward, hurtful and, yes, sometimes somewhat funny situation. the right idiot making the right bizarre racist comment can sound so absurd that you have to laugh at it. is that okay?

i don't think that sensitivity is always necessary to promote the alleviation of racism. i'm not asking for permission to tell racist jokes, i'm saying that it seems like there's a way to talk intelligently and with humor about race that shouldn't offend people.

as long as they speak english on the job *groans*

He always knew how to drop science.

TS: ethan in "righteous outer of racists" mode vs. ethan in "THAT'S NOT FUNNY" mode

in other words, it's often a bad term precisely because it's connected to slavery and segregationist, and this let's everyone off the hook.

No, my sense is that people are hyper-aware of the possibility of getting accused of racism, and of its consequences, and so they'd like to restrict the word to some clear-cut realm of pure hate, in order to be clear they can never accidentally stumble over into it. This is why so many white people run around complaining that black people "overuse" accusations of racism. And interestingly enough they might sometimes be right, but what's bizarre about this is how it's white people who enforce that supposed "hyper-sensitivity" -- if black people are too quick to shout racism, you'd think you'd more often see frank racial discussions in which people actually stood up and said they didn't think the accusation was unwarranted. I mean, this is a side-issue, but it's odd to me that people will claim blacks "over-accuse" of racism, but not, like, grow some figurative balls about it: I'm seriously still amazed that when that guy in D.C. used the word "niggardly" and everyone got angry, his supervisors and colleagues actually hemmed and hawed and tried to be sensitive and placate -- instead of just saying "sorry, it's a word, it means something else, look it up."

So I suppose my question is this: how is it that like 80% of this country's population can live in weird irrational fear of being called racist by some little subset of 10% of the remainder? How can people claim that the term is overused and "played" as a "card" and devalued -- and yet fear it so much that they wind up on eggshells over it? In other words: what real power does an accusation of racism have over a white person -- apart from the power other white people will give it, by abandoning the accused? Do you see where I'm headed with this?

Up your ass?