An interesting example of unintentional racism (?) occured when a friend of mine when to lunch with some co-workers and as another co-worker arrived someone yelled out his name (Kuhn). Just as he did this a black man came in and looked around to see who shouted. My friend felt like going up to him and explaining what happened. A similar incident happened with another friend whose teenage cousin who yelled "look at all the nickers" at a department store and two black gentlemen in another aisle turned around. In both cases the speaker had no intention of any racial slur although the listener might have thought differently - would this be categorized as systemic racism. In this case the racism may be in the mind of the listener due to an unfortunate coincidence.

I guess I do use the term black as opposed to the PC African American on the other hand I dont consider white to be unacceptable even though people of Caucasian origin are no more white than people of African descent are black. I do think political correctness has gone a bit overboard at times - is visually impaired that much better than blind. I have a blind musician friend and I remember being careful at first and avoiding some words involving sight (not really consciously mind you) and of course avoiding the words tends to draw attention to them if anything. So there is something to be said about being overly sensitive. Petr.