Posted by: tashi
Yeah, he was trying to talk about poppies and the troops. But, not too surprisingly, he let his racism slip out. Oops!
You’re dancing around the word racism by using other words, but you yourself just described how he is racist.
His relationship with a black man has nothing to do with it. Racism is how people see and judge people based on their ethnicity, plenty of people have racist ideas about groups that they make exceptions for specific individuals. “I’m not racist, I have a black friend!” is a bullshit defense.
You are confusing racism with bigotry, which is what Syncro and I are saying. Cherry was ignorant, but the difference is important. Racism is the idea of superiority based on race and that is never defensible, but your ethnicity is based on culture, and cultures are open to criticism. I can criticize Judaism, without being anti-Semitic for example.
Cherry is an asshole and a bigot, no doubt about it, and a feeling cultural superiority is not any better than racism, but I feel that racism is used too often today to silence valid criticism related to culture and religion, so that distinction is important.