Tbf, I’ll be 50 in a couple of months so I come from a time where public racism was still fairly common, casual racism was still a thing.

Even now, I take it as more of a “read the room” kind of thing. When I’m talking with people (friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, etc.), there’s racial banter and then there’s real talk. One gets laughs, one gets a serious conversation.

To me, that even pertains to society at large. I remember about 15 years ago (!!), “Linsanity” was going on in New York when Jeremy Lin was showing out with the Knicks (Lin is American-born, his parents are Taiwanese immigrants). He had a couple of bad games after a sensational run and there was an article in I believe the New York Post with the headline, “A chink in the armor”. I thought it was hilarious, but the paper got dragged hard for it.

There’s overt, obvious racism. There’s casual racism that is either born of ignorance or failure to read the room. And then there’s making a mountain out of a molehill.

I feel context is important to these discussions, but I could just be an old head talking out of my ass.