It is easier to identify someone using a racial epithet as a racist, especially if they're white; if I hear a black person using the n-word, it does seem less likely they're using it in a racially pejorative fashion (so hopefully we have that point out of the way now), but that doesn't make it non-racist when blacks use the word. I know you don't like/get certain humor but I think comedians do touch on some realities of how people think. The fundamental harm of racism is separating people because of the color of their skin. I don't think it's just that individuals are mean to people of a certain race - yes, that's bad but it's a symptom of the problem. There will never be some grand conversation on race in America (as many out the media occasionally search for, not suggested by anyone in this thread) because people are really only interested in quashing the symptoms. So it's great if the individual known as Riley Cooper apologized for his personal sin of using a racial pejorative. Maybe he's a racist to the core. Maybe he was angry and said the meanest thing he could think of. Maybe it's a word in his vocabulary for the same reason many blacks use it (even if it is super ill-advised for whites to use it). But at the end of the day, I don't care about Riley Cooper in any larger sense. And we can talk about the problem of 1 million Riley Coopers, but the outward ignorance and stereotyping are all just symptoms. In my opinion.

But we can't discuss this anymore in the thread :P