Just when I start to reach a tipping point with my frustration of the obtuseness of white conservatives when it comes to race, I run across something like Seattle School district's rather stunning definition of race and racism:

Cultural Racism: Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Now, I could get all high-and-mighty about the equivocation of libertarianism and racism. I knew that in the minds of some I am racist because I am a Republican, though being racist because of my libertarian streak is a new one on me - as is the notion that this is apparently the official view of the Seattle school district. But I will more-or-less let the proclamation that a preference for individualism over collectivism speak for itself. Anyone that believes that I am a racist should probably find something unracist to be reading, so you're welcome to leave because I don't think we have much to say to one another.

Independent Sources jumps on the "one form of English as standard" portion, which is a point that Adrianne Truett and others have noted in the past. I understand where they're coming from, though since I do believe certain aspects of English language should be dropped (who/whom, for instance) and common pronunciation is frequently wrong (as anyone that has heard me say the word "continuity" will attest) I can't muster up too definitive a case for language.

The part that caught me most by surprise was that about "future time orientation." Was this meant to say that thinking ahead is racist? If it doesn't mean that, what does it mean. I did a brief Google search and ran across Sound Politics, who helps define the term:

The time orientation of a person or culture can be past, present or future. (There are other dimensions, such as monochronic and polychronic, which we don't need to go into here.) Past-oriented cultures tend to believe all the great decisions were made in the past, and present society is a degenerate version of some past golden age. They don't value innovation highly, preferring to preserve what already exists. Tibet is a good example of such a culture, and fundamentalist Islam fits the definition, too. Future-oriented people, in contrast, believe in setting goals, planning how to reach them and innovating when necessary to accomplish their aims. Western society is the prime example of a future-oriented culture, and even for us it is a relatively recent invention, really only arising during the Renaissance. Present-oriented folks think only about the here and now, not considering how their acts relate to tradition or will effect their happiness in the future. They are impulsive and will not delay immediate gratification for some greater future reward.

The bolded portion of the quote seems to suggest, oddly, that it is not conservatives that are racist but rather liberals. It is conservatives that speak more vigorously on traditional values and whatnot. Stereotypically it is they that want to "build a bridge to the 18th century," would more likely prefer women to stay at home like they used to, and seem to hold the 1950's up as a model society. These are not necessarily positions that actual conservatives support, but they are the kinds of things that the kinds of people that write things like this believe they support. It is liberals that are stereotypically "future oriented" in that they strongly dispute the notion that the great decisions lie in the past.

These broad strokes are smudged a little bit by the New Deal and Great Society plans, which liberals seek to preserve and conservatives seek to reform and/or dismantle, but be that as it may that is not how liberals percieve themselves at the moment beyond specific issues (namely government programs).

I'm not trying to prove a point, I just found that tidbit to be quite strange and the more scrutiny I give it, the stranger it becomes.

I'm not really offended as much as I am just confused.