Letters to the Editor
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@ Susuan Sunflower
Thanks for a helpful post about an important topic. These things are difficult to examine because so much of subtle racist terminology has gone mainstream, often without the ill-intentions of the speaker who has picked up common parlance. For example, I have a teenaged cousin who called her friends. "n---ah" thinking it was all right. She had to be told why she could not coopt this word, with no concept of its volatile history. It is hard to make excuses for politicians who are far more aware of the power of words.
I have to say, I blinked when Clinton uttered her seeingly innocuous phrase- in my gut, I understood that it was racist, whether in her mind or not. Thanks to the unending commentary since the Rev. Wright brouhaha, these discussion have filled MSM programing and the blogosphere ad infinitum. Always posited on false arguments, these distracting discussions never get to the heart of the issue; for whatever reasons (ratings, corporate bosses), they dance around the edges and retreat to the superfluous. The conversation must start elsewhere.