The answer to the title question of when racism is not racism is as transparent as the Obama administration is opaque: When the MSM or officials don't want it to be.

Racism is almost always deemed racism when it involves perceived or actual attacks by whites against blacks yet rarely described as such when blacks physically and verbally abuse whites. Examples of the both social anomalies abound with the former getting by far the most media attention and the latter being mostly ignored.

For example, when the €Reverends€ Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton display their keen awareness of white racism in virtually everything they disagree with, the MSM reports those perceptions sans comment as if they were biblical truth.

However, when Sen. Charles Grassley proposed making habitual drunk driving a deportable offense for aliens, it was interpreted as racist designed to discriminate against illegals such as President Obama's drunken Uncle Omar.

When I posted an article titled, €Wisdom from the FLOTUS€ examining Michelle Obama's background, positions, and statements, a commenter strongly defended our First Lady and felt obliged to conclude in his defense, €I think racism is at least a possibility.€

White racism always seems, at the minimum, €a possibility€ when whites are accused of assaulting or even offering objective critiques of African-Americans. Black racism is virtually never considered when blacks attack whites, a fact of American life substantiated by the renowned African-American economics professor and poltical commentator, Walter E. Williams.

In an especially honest assessment of the state of racial justice in America today, Prof. Williams said, €In many of these brutal attacks, the news media make no mention of the race of the perpetrators. If it were white racist gangs randomly attacking blacks, the mainstream media would have no hesitation reporting the race of the perps.€

Truer words were never spoken as are the words spoken by Chicago Tribune Gerould Kern who conceded that €Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune . . . deliberately censored information about black crime for political reasons. . . to €guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion.' €

Foolish me! I always thought the mission of the news media, the very basis for its existence, was to report the news fairly and objectively, not to pick and choose what and how to report predicated on €political reasons,€ i.e., what is PC.

Now, granted, the American news media has always had a slant from colonial times through the twenty-first century.

Today, the Washington Times and Fox News lean toward the right, the conservative viewpoint, while the vast majority of news outlets, from the Washington Post to the New York Times to the L.A. Times to CNN to MSNBC report with a liberal slant often so distorted that it's difficult to distinguish news from editorials.

Those distortions are especially noteworthy with regard to racial attacks, as Walter E. Williams pointed out and as Gerould Kern verified. Two recent events illustrate that reality.

Just as with numerous other crimes cited here, instances in which local police departments have refused to label black on white assaults as racially-motivated €hate crimes€ and which the liberal media hardly ever identify blacks as the suspects, a violent incident occurred last week in Philadelphia.

Three African-American juveniles aged 17 and 15 attacked a cab driver and his passenger while yelling racial slurs at their white victims. Despite police confirmation that the cabbie told them of the slurs, the Philly District Attorney's office declined to lodge hate crime charges against the three.

They were arrested and charged with aggravated assault but won't be hit with the much more punitive hate-label because, according to the DA's office, no one heard them say €two blocks before, €We're going to beat somebody up because they're white, brown or purple.' €

It seems there can't be racism unless an assailant makes his intent clear two blocks away and even the cabby's statement as to the racist language is insufficient to establish a hate crime.

Imagine this scenario: A white, male radio commentator invites a white, female candidate for Congress on his show, berates and abuses her for her beliefs, curses at her, calls her stupid, condemns her for associating with blacks, and refuses to shake her hand out of fear those associations could cause blackness to rub off on him.

That commentator would rightly be thrown off the air and banned from broadcasting. Now, reverse the scenario.

In a 16-minute obscenity-studded tirade, Memphis black radio host Thaddeus Matthews ripped into black GOP candidate as €a token Negro€ Charlotte Bergmann for her ties to the €white racist€ Tea Party and wouldn't shake her hand because some €whiteness€ could rub off on him.

Was Matthews being racist? Apparently not since, last I heard, he's still spewing his vile anti-white venom on WPLX 1180. Then again, maybe he is racist but acceptably so because he's an African-American.

I trust the confusion is all cleared up now: Racism is never racism when black people beat up and malign white people but always racism when whites are accused of maligning African-Americans. Got that? If not, please refer to the wisdom of the eminent Jesse Jackson who famously capsulized the issue when he said, €Black people can't be racists.€ (See all sources at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12582.)