[quote=walterwhite]Wait up. When I think of a racist I think of someone who believes one race is superior to another. Someone can be afraid, rationally or irrationally and not think his race is superior. I just think it shuts down dialogue to say a discussion like this is off track or that someone is definitively a racist when they express what they’re actually thinking. Is Jesse Jackson a racist fir his crossing the street comment? Does he believe whites are superior?

Racist is a title that requires something extra.[/quote]

Well there you are complaining about its connotation rather than its denotation.
Using race as shorthand is racist (for good or ill).
I mean, there are degrees I suppose.
I don’t think that Jesse Jackson thinks whites are superior.
I do think he is a racist.
I think he believes that society is inherently racist.
He may have a point in that people create lines of cleavage almost at a neurologic level.
Those cleavages may be different in, say, Brazil than in the US but that is a feature of most sentient beings.