> It's hardly new -- either the denial or the critique of the denial go back
> quite a ways. Is Maher just discovering it?
Maher is well behind the curve. Racism denial has long been an indictable offense, on campus anyway.
Racism is like Voltaire's God; if it didn't exist it would have to be invented. People's careers depend on it.
Maybe it's time to retire the term, except in historical discourse. We're not in the 1920s or 1950s any more. We live -- us Amurricans, anyway; can't speak for the Krauts or the Frogs -- in a society which is, if not post-racial, at least post-racist. Nobody, but nobody, is willing to come out as a racist; a hundred years ago, nearly everybody would.
Does this mean the same thing has just gone underground? Maybe; but I don't think so. We're dealing with a different phenomenon now, I'd say, and it needs to be thought about in a different way.
It occurs to me, for example, that notions like 'structural racism' need to be related to notions like 'structural inequality'.
The melanin-advantaged still make less money on average than the melanin-challenged. Is this racism or is it simply the principle that those who were poor yesterday need to be, on average and apart from the occasional bootstrap superstar, even more poor tomorrow? <P> This is of course a principle broadly embraced, by many distinguished people, including the relatively melanin-advantaged current occupant of the Executive Mansion.