As a person of color, I’d like toss in my two cents.
I’d like other Asians to toss in their two cents because I’ve personally experienced racism and I know what I’ve encountered is not half as bad as what blacks encounter in the US. I’m not discounting what whites have to say on that issue, but it is remarkable the number of whites conservatives that pretend that racism isn’t an issue. Just because you say you aren’t a racist doesn’t make it true. And it’s not a strawman argument when one initiates a debate with a comment that the left wing loves melanin to examine the possible corollary, that the right wing hates it.
First off, in another thread here, I had to respond when someone mocked Obama for being editor of the Harvard Law Review when that same person was willing to vote for someone who scraped by with gentlemen’s Cs while in school. Why does a black who does well in school get called out possibly on affirmative action grounds but some white who is an obvious legacy candidate gets a pass for doing poorly in school?
As for “isolated” instances of racism, how many personal experiences does someone have to experience to determine that our society isn’t color-blind? 5, 10, 15, 50? As I’ve grown older and moved from the Deep South to California, my personal experiences with racism have diminished, but is that a function of overall society or me moving to a more diverse part of the country and my work/personal group being composed entirely of folks with graduate degrees?
I don’t know the answer, but let’s just say I was shocked to see an Indian Sikh colleague of mine called a sand nigger back in 2003 when he and I were on the campus of a North Carolina public university to give a presentation. I guess the anti-PC folks would claim that it’s just free speech and not a hate issue, but I guess you just had to be there.
