By now, we all know the routine.
Someone says or does something incredibly racist, gets called out for it, and then insists that we took them out of context, or are overreacting.
After all, they assure us, they have black friends, or once dated an Asian girl, or have an adopted child from Guatemala, or some such thing — so they can’t possibly be racist. No, indeed, not a racist bone in their bodies.
And as we all know, racism is a skeletal condition.
If you were offended by whatever they said or did, that’s only because you’re too sensitive. It wasn’t their intention, and their intent is all that matters.
Perhaps it’s a sign of progress that people are so quick to deny their racism nowadays.
It’s easy enough to imagine that many years ago, if accused of saying or doing something that betrayed bias against folks of color, most whites would have shrugged as if to say, what’s the big deal? I suppose it is a victory of sorts that we have evolved, socially, to the point where even the most bigoted persons typically try and keep up the pretense of racial ecumenism.
But even as the desire to deny charges of racism suggests a kind of social progress, the act of…
