Richard Thompson Ford considers The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. 00:00-24:00 reading, discussion afterwards.

The George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Richard Thompson Ford has published regularly on civil rights, constitutional law, race relations, and antidiscrimination law. In his new book, he asks what Katrina victims waiting for federal disaster relief, millionaire rappers buying vintage champagne, Ivy League professors waiting for taxis, and ghetto hustlers trying to find steady work have in common, and answers that all have claimed to be victims of racism.

Few people these days express openly racist beliefs or defend bigoted motives. So lots of people are victims of bigotry, but no one's a bigot? Ford considers whether a lot of people are lying about their true beliefs and motivations, or if a lot of people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions or just playing the race card.

Ford brings sophisticated legal analysis, lively and eye-popping anecdotes, and plain old common sense to this heated topic, offering ways to separate valid claims from bellyaching, and calling for us to treat racism as a social problem that must be objectively understood and honestly evaluated