Yep you can make a point that opportunist have taken advantage of the claim of racism. And then there are true racist hiding behind these rare events to push their agenda. I quote from the slate article -


"Many of the "New Right" became conservatives in reaction to this kind of identity politics. They had seen their neighborhood schools forcibly integrated through racial busing imposed by liberal judges."

Translation "White racists joined the Republican Party in droves on the promise that it would work to impede the civil right movement and the laws promoting integration."

It's too bad Slate felt the need to be so mindlessly inflammatory on MLK day.

Agreed. What is the point of this? Is there anything new here or is this the same conservative mantra? I guess if you say racecard racecard racecard enough times that will make it true.

tubbs:

Agreed. What is the point of this? Is there anything new here or is this the same conservative mantra? I guess if you say racecard racecard racecard enough times that will make it true.

Yes, and I guess if you look for racism under every last stone upon which you tread, I guarantee you'll find it under each of them whether it's really there or not....

They had seen their neighborhood schools forcibly integrated through racial busing imposed by liberal judges. They felt that their cherished family alma maters had succumbed to the cheap thrills of radical chic and caved in to the pressures of black nationalist mau-mauing and feminist hectoring. "Disadvantaged minorities" displaced their sons in the entering classes of Ivy League universities; militant feminists demanded integration, disrupting the comfortable esprit de corps of campus men's clubs. The traditional liberal arts curriculum had been watered down with overtly political ethnic and feminist authors, a concession to a misguided and trendy pluralism. The grande dame of classical education—Western Civilization—had been raped by radicals and begat such bastardizations as "World Civilizations" and "Cultures, Ideas, and Values." In the newly hyper-liberal colleges, they had been forced to sit through what they felt were self righteous screeds about "white male oppression," and they were browbeaten by pious professors and students alike, each competing to be more sensitive and tolerant than thou.

You don't have to be looking for racism to recognize it when it smacks you in the face.