Does a Single "Slur" Make Someone Racist?

Riley Cooper is still in trouble for shouting the "N-word", once, at a bunch of African Americans who were vocally harassing him.

The sports outlets seem to be doing their best to make a Federal case out of this, going around asking African American athletes what they think about Riley Cooper. Apparently using the word once, to a bunch of guys harassing him, means he's a died in the wool racist who thinks that all blacks are inferior and need to be driven off the planet.

It's just ridiculous!

Surely any white kid who has been in a football program in college any time in the last 30 years has been surrounded by 80% black players. As we know from Rap and stand up comedians, blacks call themselves the N word all the time, both common place and as an insult.

Is it too much to think that someone like Cooper who probably spent 4 years in college heard all this going on, was friends with his teammates, and the word just slipped out when he was angry?

Is using that word a single time - not going up to two blacks in a restaurant calming eating their food, for example, and calling them the "n-word' but rather using it towards a bunch of guys who were *harassing him* even if only verbally - does he deserve to have to grovel and apologize and go to "counseling" before his teammates accept him back?

Over on the Hannity message forums, there's a thread about some white college kid who wanted to start a Whites Only group on campus - which he was doing in response to the fact that there's a Black's Only student's group on Campus, and a Latino Only student group on campus. So if they can be exclusive and restrictive, why can't he have a White's Only group?  But of course there was an uproar because *that* would be racist.

And someone on the Hannity boards, who *agreed* with that view, said "whites are under attack" in a joking manner. Since he apparently believes that it is only minorities who are under attack, and the whites that have all the power.

But really, do we?  If we did, then Riley Cooper wouldn't be twisting in the wind right now because he used the "n-word" once to a bunch of guys who were harassing him. Michael Roberts' career wouldn't be over because of his -admittedly tasteless - lynching joke to a black heckler. Brian Griese wouldn't have been suspended for a week because in calling a college football game, he dared to suggest that a Latino player might be hiding somewhere eating a taco. (If he'd said it had been a hotdog, probably there would have been no repercussions. But to dare to say that a Latino player might actually be eating a Latino piece of food - racist!)

Yet Charlie Rangel can call the Tea Party a bunch of white "crackers" and there's no need for him to go to counseling.  Rae Dawn Chong apparently called Oprah a "field N-word" and no one's calling her a racist because she's apparently a quarter black.

What is a "field-N-word" anyway?  An African-American who speaks in an educated way with a Northern accent, interacts with whites as an equal and has accepted middle-classness (or in her case, of course, riches) .

Apparently 41% of young African Americans are unemployed.  Is this because racist employers don't want to hire them, or is it because employers can't afford to hire people who can't speak properly, don't know how to do math, don't know any manners (a common complaint with all teenagers, admittedly), have tattoos everywhere, and go around looking angry all the time? (Although - it must be said that white teens are at 20% unemployment.)

There's a commercial on TV, some beer commercial, I actually forget the brand, but the black rapper Ice Cube, I think that's his name, is their spokesperson. Have you ever seen any of these commercials?  He's done at least 3 of them,and in each one he's got this furious look on his face and struts around like he's angry and contemptuous and I'm, like, what have *you* got to be angry about? You're a multi-millionaire.  Yet this is the guy, him and his vicious, angry attitude, that the beer companies are putting out there as normal behavior.

It may be one thing for a millionaire rapper to be able to go around looking like he'd like to stomp you into a coma all the time - he can still get a job apparently, but if a teenager does that, is it any wonder he's not going to get hired?