The 'R' word

What do you call a comedian who tells a couple of black men in an audience, "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a ... fork up your ass!"?\nApparently not a racist, at least if we are to believe Michael Richards (a.k.a. Kramer from "Seinfeld"). In a comedy routine at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood, Richards verbally attacked a group of men with racist statements and repeatedly called them racist names. The two men appeared on "The Today Show" Nov. 22 and reported that he continued with even more attacks that weren't caught on film. For example: "When I wake up in the morning, I'll still be rich. When you wake up, you'll still be a nigger." \nSince his on-stage meltdown and tirade, Richards has blitzed the media with apologies. He appeared on David Letterman a few days later to say he was "deeply sorry" for the hurt he caused. He spoke to Rev. Al Sharpton and offered yet another apology on Rev. Jesse Jackson's radio show last Sunday. He has called his outburst crap, horrible and disgusting. He described the rage that lives within him and claimed he's going to see a psychiatrist to work on it.\nIt's wonderful that Michael Richards embraced some accountability for his racist tirade (that's better than the "I was drunk, and I'm going to rehab" dismissal). Now if only he would also own up to the racism that he's internalized by living in a society where the pervasive racism of the past still very much lingers in the present.\nUnfortunately, despite all his apologies and atonement, Richards remains adamant: "I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this." On his radio show, Jesse Jackson asked Richards again, "Do you consider yourself a racist?" Michael Richards firmly replied again: "No."\nFunny how that works. Richards spewed more than two-and-a-half minutes of racist epithets and degrading comments at black men in the audience, but don't dare imply he's a racist.\nWe saw the same thing during election season. The recently ousted Sen. George Allen from Virginia -- the one who was photographed with the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens, flew Confederate flags and derisively welcomed to America an Indian American he nicknamed "Macaca" -- also was very quick to explain that he was not a racist.\n"Racist" is about as ugly and unspeakable to most white people as the n-word is to black Americans. But just because we don't like to hear it, much less recognize how racism touches each of our lives in some ugly way, doesn't mean it's not present.\nIn the end, I suppose it matters little whether we label Michael Richards a racist, a bigot or a fool. Rather, it's important to let his horrifying racial tirade point to the fact that there's probably a little racism that lives in all of us. Time to start owning that fact and, like Richards, do some soul-searching as to how to correct the problem that we find all to easy to ignore.