Jansey,

I don't think your friend is a racist - you said you were good friends.

You say she hasn't spoken to you since you pointed out the the name of her dog was a racist slur.

I suspect your friend is very, very embarrassed.

If I had inadvertently named a pet with a racist epithet ... had it pointed out to me by a close friend, an indigenous friend ... I would want to find the deepest hole to fall into, and pull the walls around me.

"Please do not be alarmed. The improbability level of long-disappeared Jansey's creative storytelling is two to the power two hundred and seventy-six thousand to against-possibly much higher."

(with apologies to Douglas Adams)

As a matter of curiosity, do indigenous people identify other indigenous groups as different, perhaps lesser?

Do indigenous groups see marriage within another group as a movement up?

Dear onthebeach,

I know it is hard for you to believe or countenance but an indigenous man may well tell us that he has a very close white female friend without it being a 'creative story'. I have absolutely no reason to doubt what he told us was factual, do you? I tend to take these things on face value unless I have some reason to believe otherwise and I can see nothing that gives me any cause for concern here.

So what is prompting this from you? You have asserted it more than once. Why do you think you feel this way?

csteele,

Come off the grass. Factual you say? With an improbability level of two to the power two hundred and seventy-six thousand to against-possibly much higher?

Jigaboo?! Yeah, a likely dog's name in Australia, Not!

So 'fess up, you had never heard of it before had you?

The B.S. detector goes right off the scale.

I remember the day it occurred to me I was in fact racist. In my late teens to early twenties, I recalled that for a period in my childhood, I was in fact the proud owner of a 'Golly W0g'.

I had no idea until then that I was a racist. I have carried the guilt ever since, and have tried to cleanse my soul, tried to confront my inner 4 year old about my horrible behavior back then.

For not does it matter I had no concept even of race, it matters only that some other person who may even have been born ten, twenty years later, and even lived with far more advantages and lived a more privileged existence than me, but with different ancestry, may have taken offence, and that offence defines my racism, and any motive or lack of PC awareness of my 4 year old self is neither here nor there.

One can always be comfortable assigning the label Racist to anyone based on the perception of their words by the oppressed minority, as it is entirely reasonable to infer a person is racist: a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others.

Even at 4 years old.

BTW:
I also sung the words catch-a-n1gger-by-the-toe.If-he-squeals-let-him-go. I often pondered what a n1gger actually was, but I liked the rhyme and though at least they let him go when he squealed. But, if overheard by another 4 year old, hopefully his parents told him I was undeniably and inescapably a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others.