I've got to concur with bushbasher - ignorance doesn't mean racism. If a person is uneducated and makes a comment that is construed as racist, but the person is genuinely ignorant and meant no harm, then you can't call them racist.

When I was a child I once heard someone refer to black people as 'coloured.' I made the same reference in passing one day and my older brother informed me that it wasn't a polite term, so I stopped using the term. By the earlier definition, that would make me racist.

Look, I don't agree with any form of racism in society, but I think we need to draw the line somewhere a little further along then a comment like this one. Frankly, it seems like piffle. We don't even know if the offender in question was informed that the term was impolite.

Then, Ms Lusby later brings in the topic of violence - but frankly, this example was so far divorced from actual violence I didn't seem them to be related at all. "Stamping out violence" is all well and good, but a single instance of name calling - not even a campaign of harassment, from what I've seen thus far - seems pretty pathetic.

TurnRightThenLeft
With your theory that "ignorance doesn't mean racism." you violate a very basic principle of the justice system. IGNORANCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE! Every one can said that he/she did not know what he did was illegal.
Do you remember what the member of kkk and killer of three black human rights activists in Missisipe said?
I DID NOT KNOW THAT IT WAS ILLEGAL TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE!
We can show some understanding to ignorance but not every time and in every case.
The most impotant is that IGNORANCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

AS,

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is essentially to counter ridiculous claims such as "I didn't know it was illegal to kill blacks" and is used where the perpetrator can under normal circumstances be expected to know or find out.

For example going the wrong way down a one way street, "I didn't see the sign" is no excuse where the sign is present, as one is expected to look.

However, in the case where vandals have stolen the sign, in most cases the case would be dismissed as a reasonable person could not be expected to know.

Where there is no clear law, and the sensitivities are entirely contextual based, misunderstandings cannot be legally punished as the tribunal ruled.

What's your excuse?

I'm well aware of the law, Antonios.

As a general rule, it needs to be applied along with common sense.

You're not doing that.

Read my post again and tell me why I'm wrong, instead of following the 'letter' of the law.

Tell me again if you would seriously punish a child who said an insulting word because they didn't know it was insulting.

Because that seems pretty damn dumb to me.

When you kill someone, it's harder to make a case that your intentions were good. A simple word is different.

You know this, I'm sure. Words are about meanings. If a person doesn't know the correct meaning and generally means well, I refuse to treat them in that way.

As the most basic and simplest-possible definition of "racism", nothing is clearer than identifying anyone as a member of a "race" other than "the human race".

"African-American" and "Negro" are usually understood to inform middle-class concepts of "race" (therefore they pass muster by this site's automated censorship filters). The terms are therefore "racist" regardless. The term "n!gg3r" is usually understood to inform working-, peasant- and gentry-class concepts of that same artificial "race" notion. All such terms are obviously "racist" in that they perpetuate a notion of separate "races" other than the only one i.e., "the human race", with all its inevitable healthy mixture of geographic, social and class origins.

However, the middle class" terms are deemed somehow acceptable, while only the others are stigmatized as "racist".

A recent Russian movie "Brother 2" depicted this idiotic, hypocritical racism when a group of white-skinned Russians camped at a Chicago riverbank. A homeless black-skinned man arrived and angrily disrupted the group's campfire, inciting one of the Russians to protest in halting English: "No, no, n!gg3r, you go, you go away!"

One of the Russians - a long-term emigre there - chided the other: "Don't call them that. They get very upset if you call them that". The other Russian then asked, bewildered: "What should I call them then?". "African-Americans", she replied.

The other Russian then asked: "What's the difference?"

She sighed, shrugged her shoulders, then answered: "I don't know".

When 98% of black people voted for Obama was that:

a. "just a little bit racist"?

or

b. very racist because "There’s no such thing as being just a little bit racist"?

or

c. not racist at all because only white people are racist?

or

d. None of the above. KMB is racist because he brought it up?