Almost everyone in this thread is operating under a huge misconception — the idea that a verbal attack cannot be “racist” unless it contains some specific word specifically associated with racism.
If I write “Obama was a lazy stupid student afraid to release his Harvard transcripts” would that be a racist attack? One can imagine a whole spectrum of such insults; where do you draw the line and say “that one is racist”?
If a verbal insult is NOT racist unless it contains a very specific word (ng, watermelon, boy) judged to be inherently racist, then it is trivial for racists to avoid any charge of racism — just be clever enough to avoid such a specific word. Is this how “racist attack” is now defined at SDMB?
Was Kelly’s attack racist? I’ve already given my answer: Study a sample of similar insults by Kelly and see if he tends to reserve such harsh abuse for specific ethnic groups. Perhaps someone with links to Kelly’s speeches or good Googling skill will be able to help here. (I’ll guess it will be hard to get a good sample. Kelly’s verbal abuse of Ms. Wilson was so peculiarly harsh and unfair, I’ll guess you’ll be unable to find anything else that is this extreme.)
I find SDMB mentation on this question very misguided. I was once reprimanded (though no racism charge was made) for using ‘Oriental’ here:
I don’t think this comment had any racist intent, — I’d just used a “racist word.” Conversely, I guess Kelly should be allowed to say very ugly things about blacks as long as he avoids certain words — is that what is being argued? (Someone suggested that ‘Asian-American’ was preferred to my ‘Oriental’ but might have been joking.)
Yet Kelly can call the black Congresswoman an ‘empty barrel’ and it is off-limits to suggest he might be racist. :smack:
I do not know if Kelly has racist leanings — like I say, I’d need to look at more evidence — but his bizarre and untruthful rant against Wilson is highly suggestive of it.
ETA: And of course, even if Kelly himself is “not racist” it seems extremely likely that his unfair comments were designed to appeal to the racist Trump base.