Brit Hume of Fox News is not holding his breath waiting for Rep. Steve King to win any award for being a civil rights leader. But as Mr. Hume notes, the NYT, which printed a long piece on King’s history of racist comments, should not be “throwing the word racist around with abandon.”

Islam a Faith, Not a Race

I read every one of them. Some of them weren’t even about race, some were about Islam. Islam is not a race, it’s a faith.

Many of them might be considered insensitive, but they weren’t racist. Racism is a very specific thing. It means the belief in the superiority of one race over another. And it is taboo in the United States as well it should be.

But we need to be careful flinging this term around because what happened to this tragically is this great triumph of the civil rights movement making racism indefensible and intolerable has been weaponized. And the term now, the adjective racist, is hurled around with abandon.

The New York Times’ piece was completely bogus. Those comments — look, I don’t agree with them. I’m no fan of Steve King. But, I am sorry, they did not amount to racism.

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