Okay, a bit of a headline grabber, or in today's terminology link bait. The truth is I am sure I am racist by definition but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that, I'm also sure most others are too. Let me try to explain.
The first thing is to define the problem, what is racism? If you take a dictionary definition then I am certainly not racist as I don't believe that any one race is superior to another. However, this is not the common meaning when we are told that something is racially discriminated against, this means that they are treated differently, and usually worse, because of race.
So do I treat people differently because of their race, honestly yes. For example quite recently I went to a pub, not that unusual you may say, and you'd be right, in this case though I did something unusual, I left after a quick one. The reason was that I didn't feel comfortable, I was the only white man in the place and although the piano didn't stop playing as I walked in (it looked like it had stopped playing a good decade ago) in the style of numerous westerns, conversations did halt briefly. I wasn't going to just walk out though, I had one drink and left, arranging to meet my friend elsewhere and let it be said I wasn't threatened in any way - so was I racist, I can't imagine doing that in a normal bar with the standard London mix of nationalities? But there you are, I felt uncomfortable and varied my actions purely because of race. Not that the people in the pub suffered though, they probably never gave my actions a moment's thought.
I think my main point is that you can’t legislate how people think, you can make certain actions illegal (although leaving a pub probably won’t be one of them).
On a different note although I deplore the apparent actions of those Chelsea supporters who refused to let a black man onto the their carriage on the Metro why are they being taken to court in England? As far as I know you can only be prosecuted for breaking the law of the country you are in or if your criminal act affects citizens of that country. So they should be on trial in France, if they broke the law there. After all you wouldn't expect Brits who partake of cannabis in Dutch cafés to be prosecuted in in the UK, would you?
