I’ve never bought the line that America has somehow moved beyond our racist past, and stories like this odious woman selling racist bumper stickers in Georgia and claiming the N-word isn’t a racial slur don’t help matters.

It’s not that I think she speaks for all of white America, but there are enough people, including the ones who forward me jokes about Muslims and Jews and immigrants, who like to think that since we’ve come this far — hey, schools used to be segregated and we elected a black guy as president — that we’re beyond racism as something to worry about and can’t you take a joke, anyway?

As far as this woman is concerned, she’s doing nothing wrong, she’s totally not racist — she has black friends, after all — and the fact that a bunch of liberal (and queer) bloggers are on her case just proves that she is really the victim here. If anything, this little incident will harden her resolve to bring America back to the way it used to be when people knew their place and thinking about racial matters was something only the Commie outside agitators did just to stir up trouble among our nice quiet colored friends.

Ain’t that America?