@Baldimo,
Quote:First off I've said it before and I'll say it again, I didn't vote for Trump.
Neither did I. But unlike you I don't go around making excuses for him.
Quote: Does it make it less racist because Snood is black?
You're confusing different aspects of the word "racist". It's an unfortunate consequence of the way words are formed and used in the English language. If I look at a group of people who have different skin colors and physical features I might describe some of them as "black", some as "Oriental", some as "Hispanic", some as "Middle Eastern", some as "white". I "discriminate" between them in the manner of the Cambridge dictionary definition: "2. to be able to see the difference between two things or people".
Some of these differing characteristics are ascribed to "race", so by recognizing those distinctions I am employing "racism". Demographers do this all the time without prejudice or any other race-based implication; it's simply a description based external physical characteristics. Non-specialists can do this as well.
However, the first definition is "1. to treat a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their skin colour, sex, sexuality, etc." If we do this based on what we believe a person's "race" to be then we are "racists" in the other, pejorative sense. In this era of Trump the difference between the two uses is being exploited, defensively, as when Trump accuses Rep. Cummings of being a "racist" and you similarly accuse Snood — monkey see, monkey do. Oh, I'm likening you to a "monkey"? Is that "racist" of me? No, I just think you're copying the behavior of your particular hive.
In any case, I needn't "defend" Snood because I understand what he said to be well within the boundaries of using race as a neutral descriptive term. And yes, people who are seen as members of a particular race do have more leeway to criticize the behavior of others in their group because it is assumed that they are not inferring racial inferiority, merely annoying behavior. For instance, I remember trying to learn how to dance and being told I was "dancing like a white boy" by the white instructor. I knew exactly what she meant and so did the rest of the white people in the dance class. No one took the least bit of offense. I've never set foot on a dance floor since, preferring to spend my time on the bandstand.
