THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What I don’t like about that comment is that it denies that there are racist impulses in all of us, dismissing it instead as looking for the most hurtful words. Richards, while he seemed sincere and shaken in his apology on Letterman, still insisted he wasn’t a racist. Well, yes and no. He may not actively engage in bigotry, but those feelings/impulses are clearly under the surface. And they are, to a degree, for all of us. I think it’s when you delude yourself that you become prone to fits like Richards had.

In that case, Richards’ racist feelings are no different than the rest of us.  Under the theory then, his rage exposes his racism, and its our ability to control our rage that blocks that racism from coming through.

I don’t agree or disagree.

Right, it’s just a matter of degree. Take the movie “Crash,” for instance (all the best evidence comes from fictional anecdotes, I find). Matt Dillon, who’s basically openly racist, still comes through and saves a black woman (whom he molested, no less) from a fiery car crash. Ryan Phillippe, who disapproves of Dillon for his racist attitudes and seems open-minded and progressive, ends up killing an innocent black man when he thinks he’s reaching into his jacket for a gun. What does this prove? Nothing, of course, but it’s extremely complex, and being racist doesn’t preclude someone from being a good person, and saying all the right things doesn’t preclude someone from being a racist.

What exactly does being a “racist” mean?  As in many of our baseball discussions, it is difficult to answer or even discuss an issue without defining the pertinent words.

I doubt there is a universal definition, which might mean that one’s man’s racist is not necessarily another’s.

Not to mention the fact that there must be a continuum of racism and it might be that none of us is precisely at one end or the other.

If being racist means not being 100% color blind, in a negative way of course, then Richards is clearly a racist, as are many of us.  If being racist is to be perjorative towards a person or persons based on their race in our everyday lives and perhaps even pervasively or on a regular basis, then people like Richards and Gibson are probably not racist (or anti-semitic in Gibson’s case), but we don’t know for sure unless we follow them around for a while.