So help me out here. "Uppity" coming out of the mouth of a 58 year old white politician who was born and raised in Georgia is okay, because that really just means "elitist?" Right. Thanks for clearing that up for me. So, tell me, will we also be harming the campaign if we take umbrage when they call him "boy?" Obviously just a reference to his relative youth, right? That will certainly follow if there's no outcry over this one. Soon thereafter we'll get "woolly headed," solely as a refernce to his thinking, of course, and then, next, what? "Spearchucker," maybe, in reference solely to his tendency to cast verbal darts at his opponents.

You say you grew up in the south. I don't know how old you are--though if you put it on your profile, the answer is appparently "500 Internal Server Error," as is the answer to most other questions--so I don't know when you grew up in the south. I can tell you, however, that there was a time not so very long ago when the descriptor "uppity," when applied to a black man, was highly likely to be followed soon thereafter by "dead." It is not, therefore, a word that vicious old white guys from the south get to recycle back into the venacular without some pushback.

"Uppity" means "acting above one's proper station in life." You think there are no racial overtones to that?

In all my years, I don't ever recall ever hearing that word used in anything other than a racial context, i.e. invariably followed by the word "nigger." Not once. And I rather doubt that the first time I do hear it used that way will be from the mouth of a 58 year old man who was born and raised in Georgia.

The guys's a politician from the south. He was 14 when well-known uppity person of color Medgar Evers was murdered. He was 18 when even more uppity person of color Martin Luther King was assassinated. He knew exactly what he was saying.

You, apparently, don't.

I'm in my 30's, so admittedly I came about after the worst of the civil rights struggle in the south.

The "58 year old white guy" may well be a filthy racist. I don't know -- and am not debating that.

I suppose that my issue is what looks to me (a good socially liberal chap) to be actively looking for things to be offended about. This, to me, smacks of that.

And yeah, I do think it does harm to the fight against racism and sexism when we treat them as tools to bludgeon political opponents with.

It seems obvious to me that "spear-chucker" and "wooly-headed" are racist slurs. I don't lump "uppity" nor "boy" in there, though after reading your post I understand why it might be similarly obvious to you that these words too are in the bucket with "spear-chucker."

In the end, in my view, it's 2008, not 1958. I don't think Biden was automatically being sexist when he said Palin is "good looking" or when Obama is referred to as uppity. There are so many worthwhile things to be incensed about: for me, this doesn't fit the bill.

(With apologies for the 4x multipost)