But those two South Carolinians and their defender at Goldblog weren’t trying to conjure up all that historical ugliness. They’re just some down-home guys, regular schmoes who can’t be bogged down with all that reading and the assumption of basic human dignity of folks who aren’t like them.

i hope we are slowly as a society getting into the subtleties of prejudice, racism, sexism and the like, it’s not always cut and dry. The extremes of ‘i must kill you’ or ‘i hate you’ because you are ‘other’ takes a small foundation of ’small’…er… ‘rational’ prejudices on which to build up to the extreme irrational. These break downs and explanations of why this was just wrong…i keep getting reminded of how needed they are.

Everyone turns and looks at me.

“Oh, how about Jeremy!”

Laughter ensues.

The model minority stereotype applied to Asians has been particularly damaging, in part because it obscures extreme class heterogeneity among Asian groups in this country.

it also obscures geographic heterogeneity, ethnic heterogeneity, etc.

“jeremy, i think you can lend some special insight to this part.”

How did you respond?

On a slightly more personal note, in high school, we read The Merchant of Venice out loud in class, where we all were assigned parts. Guess which character the token Jew was assigned to play?