Due to my generally tranquil cheery nature, I tend to avoid confrontation of any kind, especially confrontations about something I hate talking about like race. However, I have been a witness to several different interactions involving heated discussions about whether or not someone has been acting "racist" by the way they have been talking or acting, and believe me, I'm happy I've stayed out of it up to this point. From what I have seen, really there is no winner in these kinds of discussions because the conversation eventually declines into a name-calling shouting match which is utterly useless. I find this disappointing because if there are ever true racial issues that arise in our society, they are almost impossible to discuss without America, the country that cried racist, flipping out and discrediting the real problems. I completely agree with Wachtel in that the word "racist" has totally lost its value because of its massive overuse. It is being used to describe things that should be labeled as prejudice, bias, bigotry, etc. I find it interesting how the misuse of language has actually desensitized the public to an issue that is largely important in today's society.
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Brian you are a genius. You pointed out that often discussions about whether comments are racist lead to shouting matches that accomplish nothing. This reminds me of the writing arguments unit when we discussed how to form arguments that go somewhere as opposed to just going "because I said so" and then launching into a fury of name-calling. I agree that we should all realize that racism is not the same as bigotry and prejudice and whatever other adjectives.
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