> I think Doug's formulation is better. The problem with the word
> "racism" is not that it's been over-used as much as it's been
> mis-used. For example, I've seen advocates of the W.J. Wilson
> "declining significance of race" theory being described as "racist"
> even though Wilson doesn't deny the existence of institutional racism.
This just poses up another question. Why are some people mis-using the term? Where do they get their definition of racism? What is their definition of racism?
I have seen many examples of people mis-using the term but the original question was about people who know what the definition of racism is and yet hesitate to use the term. As if it would be simply too rude to actually say the Republican party exploits racism and implements racist policies. When you read stories in print media you hear euphemisms for "racist" quite frequently. Perhaps if when reporting on such things the authors simply called the policies racist instead of dancing around with polite language we might make more headway towards eliminating the structural problems that exist with regards to racism.
John Thornton