Today, racism is usually quite casual; sometimes, it is even unconscious. I was pretty horrified, for example, when I read a study that showed people with certain ethnic-sounding names were less likely to be offered job interviews than people with Anglo names, even if their CVs were otherwise the same.
We should remember that cognitive biases and prejudices can affect people's actions without them realising it. For me, that is the best justification for initiatives like diversity training in workplaces, which often get a bad rap. Clearly, some hiring managers and HR flunkies need to be reminded that attitudes about different races, even if held unconsciously, can lead to discrimination. Of course, there is also the ugly, off-hand racism that some minority groups cop, particularly aboriginal people. Sadly, it still seems acceptable in some quarters to tell childish jokes about indigenous people and negatively stereotype them. This article goes too far, though. The example of airport security is especially silly. Racist just means you disagreed with the PC orthodoxy. It has no other meaning but Ed is right and he is wrong. The word is losing its power but not because it is so powerful but because it has been over-used and people are taking it over, mocking it, claiming to be it whether they are or not and basically thumbing their nose in the same way the wogs did when they disarmed the term wog.
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