Okay, I'm white, so I don't think I have a whole lot of experience to be commenting on this. But I am a historian, too, and have studied race relations and such.
I really think it's a bad idea to use a "one size fits all" approach to judging racism. I could go into a long explanation, but I don't have time and I think other people could explain it better anyway. But basically, racism is bad because of the harmful effects, and when the harmful effects are different, manifestations of racism should be viewed differently.
Essentially, this guy making the little "whiteness" comment might be prejudiced, but I seriously doubt a single white person anywhere felt seriously hurt by it, and I'm positive it didn't aggravate existing, serious anti-white persecution. Anti-white racism just isn't a serious civil rights issue. Whereas if he'd been a white DJ talking about black people, it'd be much worse, because anti-black racism is still a very serious civil rights issue.
Yes, the DJ was rude. But there's context behind this argument, stuff that goes back hundreds of years, and stuff that Frederick Douglass and many others long before him talked about. Stuff revolving around legitimate grievances. Stuff that the average black person has more personal experience with than almost any white person, and stuff that the average black person knows more about historically than the average white person, and stuff that both politically and emotionally affects a black person more than it could ever affect a white person.
I mean, I did a M.A. paper on resistance to school desegregation in my county. And one article I found was a black man speaking on behalf of the white racist segregationists and saying some of the most pathetic, anti-black racist bullshit I've ever seen. For a more reason story, see the P&CE thread about the conservative black pastor who said non-conservative black people should be enslaved. Overall, there's some very legitimate grievances to be had against that type of person.
And while I suppose that may lead to some overreactions against anyone who seems to be that way, and probably does make the "Uncle Tom" accusation an effective way to slur someone, it's not my place to judge that. I'm not black, and I don't have the personal experience to make that determination.
However, I am a transsexual lesbian, and there are similar issues in the LGBT community, complicated things that most straight and/or cisgender people won't know much about or have a personal stake in. Very different from this particular situation, but that's not my point.
My point is that if a non-LGBT person read about one of the internal LGBT debates that got heated, and decided to come into the QUILTBAG forum and try to tell us what we should think about it, without themselves understanding all the history and subtleties behind it, I'd be pretty annoyed. And if they then said that they're just presenting an "uncommon opinion" and don't care what actual LGBT people think about that, I'd be more annoyed. And I could certainly imagine that person getting kicked out of the forum.
So, basically, Nexus, I don't think you understand how you're coming off here. If you honestly mean well, I recommend either doing a lot of academic research on the subject, enough to understand why it's very complicated and can't just be reduced to a few facile quips about "racism is racism" from outsiders with little experience. Or more easily, just accept that it's not your area of expertise and back off when people in that community say you're coming across as problematic.
I hope I don't get in trouble with the mods for calling Nexus out like this. I just think I might can understand some of the problem with people commenting on identity group issues they don't understand. Because I used to do it before I knew I was LGBT, and before I took years of classes focused on the issue and learned just how complicated the stuff was. And then I had those classes, and then I accepted I was trans and quickly got immersed in LGBT culture and internal conflicts (which I still don't fully understand because of my youth and relative inexperience).
So, um, I kinda understand why someone who isn't a member of a group might want to try to clumsily understand and end up making statements based on very limited experience. And I also understand just how obnoxious that can be when you're on the other side. So that's why I'm talking about this.
And I very much apologize if I just helped derail a thread on black issues with a long post on fixing white issues. It just kinda seemed to me that the undertone of those white issues had kinda influenced this thread from the beginning. (Especially with Fox News being involved, and all.)