That's Racist - Jonah Goldberg

The accusation becomes a punch line.

‘That’s racist.”

It’s a comedic catchphrase these days, popularized by an online clip from a 2005 TV show Wonder Showzen on MTV2. It’s not as iconic as Gary Coleman’s “What ’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” or Fonzie’s “Ayyyyyy” or even Bart Simpson’s “Don’t have a cow, man.” But what it lacks in pedigree, it makes up for in ubiquity and social relevance.

“The segregated neighborhoods and swimming pools of Bradley’s grandparents have yielded to more subtle forms of discrimination. That’s reflected in how ‘that’s racist’ is being used — to shut down conversations or as a joke.”


But what’s the joke? We don’t find out until a 14-year-old-boy says it plainly: “I think I or other people just sort of do it as a way of mocking people who are overly sensitive about race issues.”

Bingo!

a wonderful yet utterly inconvenient truth for the ostentatiously liberal network:
     
     Young people just aren’t as uptight about race as their parents, never mind their grandparents, are. 


No, racism hasn’t vanished. And the legacy of racism has a long half-life.

But the simple fact is “that’s racist” is the sort of thing those darn kids today say to make fun of their aging Gen X and baby-boomer parents.

It’s also a common joke among conservatives, precisely because we’re used to being called racists for the weirdest things. If I write on Twitter something about how I don’t like “Obamacare,” some fellow right-winger will immediately respond with some variant of “that’s racist!”

And that’s the joke.

And the people who’ve spent the last few decades screaming “that’s racist,” not as a punch line but as a heinously unfair accusation or in an attempt to bully people, don’t seem to get that the joke is on them.