Not all racial boorishness is racism.

Racism is alive and dangerous, from genocide on down to exclusion. It's an issue of the heart, and needs to be dealt with as such.

That's why I'm not all that upset about the Spanish basketball team's "slant-eye" photo-op. Making fun of somebody's facial features is just provincial. It's something that's funny when you're a child, and is no longer interesting when you grow up.

But when we use words like racist where stupid would suffice, we risk dilluting the importance of addressing racism.

Consider this, from Feyenoord (Rotterdam, Netherlands) fans, chanting against Ajax of Amsterdam (a team associated with Jews, albeit with no Jews on the roster:

Hamas, Hamas, the Jews into the Gas

It's around 0:25 of this clip. the Dutch is "hamas, hamas, joden aan het gas":



Comments below the clip (in Dutch) argue the finer point that they hate Ajax Jews (the largely gentile fans), not Jews in general.

Ian Buruma attended one of these matches while writing Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam, and the Limits of Tolerence:

"F__ing Jews!" [Feyenoord fans] went again every time an Ajax player touched the ball, even if he was a black Surinamese. "Cancer Jew!" they shouted when the blond referee from the northern province of Friesland whistled for a Feyenoord foul.

And then I heard it for the first time, a sinister hissing sound from hundreds, maybe thousands, of beer-flecked mouths. I didn't know what it meant, until [Buruma's friend] Hans explained it. The sound got louder: the sound of escaping gas.

In Budapest soccer stadiums, players of a side owned by a Jewish businessman were greeted by rival supporters shouting: "The trains to Auschwitz are ready!" In the Olympic Stadium of Amsterdam, the fans were a touch more inventive.

In light of such creepy populist passion, it seems trite to accuse the Spaniards of racism. Racism is deadly, and shouldn't by dilluted by association with stupidity.