Kevin Allen on Racism
Kevin Allen was a contestant on Donald Trump's TV show The Apprentice in 2004. Allen was a Wharton Business School graduate, with an Emory MBA, and a University of Chicago law graduate, was "fired" as a contestant by Trump because Trump felt Allen was, essentially, an over-educated under-achiever.
Trump has been on a pretty clearly racist tear in various anti-President Obama shenannigans, including demanding proof that President Obama was born in the U.S. He's also demanded "proof" of the President's scholarly record as an undergraduate at Columbia, and as a law student at Harvard.
Trump has recently claimed that he is "the least racist person there is."
In a post at Talking Points Memo, Kevin Allen offers the following thoughtful comment on racisim:
I think it's important to note given his comment that racism is not about just making racial slurs or about what you say outwardly, it's also a mindset and how you feel about folks and how you compartmentalize. It's interesting, I read his comment when he referred to how he has a great relationship with "the blacks," like it was some sort of alien population, which is a bit odd.
It is, I think, unconscious bigotry that is the hardest to identify and excoriate from ourselves.