Jon Stewart: Racists Clearly Unsure What Racism Is

Thanks to the Donald Sterling brouhaha, the Cliven Bundy brouhaha, and the Supreme Court's upholding of the Michigan affirmative action ban, Jon Stewart spent quite a bit of time talking about racism on the Daily Show last night. Re: Sterling, whose comments were of course made to his mixed-race girlfriend, he noted: "It's that age-old story: 'Yeah, I'm racist, but my d--- and my wallet are not.'" Stewart went on to marvel at the way racists and/or their apologists loudly insist they're not racist—heck, even the KKK is insisting it's not racist as it distances itself from Jewish center shooting suspect Frazier Glenn Cross.

Take Bundy, who said that if "those people" are offended by him using words like "Negro," "black boy," or "slave," it's really because "Martin Luther King hasn't got his job done yet." The good news is that the remarks of Bundy and Sterling were widely condemned—the bad news is that, while "we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad, where we seem to have dropped the ball is in teaching people what racism actually is," Stewart said. "Which allows people to say these incredibly racist things whilst insisting they would never." (More Jon Stewart stories.)