{"id":1599,"date":"2010-07-22T03:42:11","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T11:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2010-07-22T03:42:11","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T11:42:11","slug":"top-ten-racist-incidents-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/?p=1599","title":{"rendered":"Top Ten Racist Incidents of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My latest essay at PajamasMedia: <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/zombie\/2010\/07\/22\/top-ten-racist-incidents-of-the-week\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Top Ten Racist Incidents of the Week<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the introduction:<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Obama\u2019s \u201cpost-racial America\u201d has not materialized. Instead, the nation has gone in the opposite direction and become race-<em>obsessed<\/em> America.<\/p>\n<p>No, that\u2019s not quite right either. We\u2019re not obsessed with <em>race<\/em> \u2014 we\u2019ve become obsessed with <em>accusations of racism<\/em>. Some of the accusations are true; some, not so much. But what used to be a last-ditch smear tactic used only by the most desperate political operatives, or something which as a society we\u2019d try to ignore in the hopes that it would go away, has instead become a daily occurrence, a standard category in the 24-hour news cycle:<br \/>\n<strong>Politics \u2022 Sports \u2022 Business \u2022 Accusations of Racism \u2022 Weather<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just a few years ago, shortly before Obama appeared on the political landscape, I wrote this satirical dictionary definition of the word \u201cracist\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"border: thin solid; border-color: lightgrey; padding: 1em\"><p><strong>racist<\/strong> \u2013 A statement of surrender during an argument. When two people or disputants are engaged in an acrimonious debate, the side that first says \u201cRacist!\u201d has conceded defeat. Synonymous with saying \u201cResign\u201d during a chess game, or \u201cUncle\u201d during a schoolyard fight. Originally, the term was meant to indicate that one side was accusing the other of being racist, but once it was noticed that people only resorted to this tactic when all other arguments had been exhausted, it acquired its new meaning of \u201cindicating one\u2019s own concession of defeat.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, how times have changed, and how quickly. Not only do people now reach for the race card first in almost any political, social, or personal dispute, but sometimes the accusations are even true (or partly true), as public exhibition of racism has become more commonplace. No matter how you slice it \u2014 an increase of racism <em>and<\/em> of false accusations of racism \u2014 I see this as a huge step backward for our nation.<\/p>\n<p><big><strong>The Week in Racism<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\n<p>So many accusations of racism battle for space in your morning headlines, it\u2019s easy to get them all confused. So I\u2019ve created the following scorecard to help you sort it all out.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the <big><strong>Top Ten Accusations of Racism<\/strong><\/big> for the last week, along with a handy \u201cLevel of Actual Racism\u201d accuracy rating (on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 being the most racist) to help determine to what extent each accusation is true, or if the accuser is just crying \u201cUncle\u201d in a losing argument.<br \/>\n&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Read the rest <a href=\"http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/zombie\/2010\/07\/22\/top-ten-racist-incidents-of-the-week\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My latest essay at PajamasMedia: Top Ten Racist Incidents of the Week Here&#8217;s the introduction: Obama\u2019s \u201cpost-racial America\u201d has not materialized. Instead, the nation has gone in the opposite direction and become race-obsessed America. No, that\u2019s not quite right either. We\u2019re not obsessed with race \u2014 we\u2019ve become obsessed with accusations of racism. Some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1606,"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zombietime.com\/zomblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}