Polite Racism

Texas Lynch Mob, photo by J. L. Mertins , 1893 (image of lynched African-American removed to avoid offending polite racists). Source: Library of Congress

Not everyone called a racist is a really bad racist. If you don’t believe it, just ask them. Let’s coin a new term.

Recently, Miss Michigan, Kathy Zhu, was stripped of her title because of tweets that Miss World America officials judged to be “offensive, insensitive, and inappropriate.”

Zhu replied in a Twitter video that “Little attacks like those really, really diminishes [sic] the value and the [truth] of the…