You're right of course, but the real reason is that racism is still a large issue in contemporary society and so people get really emotional about it.
You should check out one of those Iranian Diaspora nationalist websites where people are ranting about how Herodotus was an anti-Persian xenophobe.
----- Original Message ---- From: Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 12:36:22 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Lincoln Gordon, he dead
The more I think about it, the more I dislike the linguistic construction "a racist." Do any of us really believe that it's possible to be non-racist within a certain social relationship, or racist outside of it? So why this focus on the individual, as if the purity of Conrad's soul counted for much of anything? I propose that this is the mirror image of that periodic whipping boy of the list, the working class as defined through identity politics: the racist as defined through identity politics.