Over on his blog, deep thinker/afro-joke-goes here New Yorker scribe Malcolm Gladwell ponders the recent Michael Richards imbroglio and comes up with a few simple ways to determine the racism level of public outbursts. Gladwell boils it down to three factors:

• Content: "What is said clearly makes a difference. I think, for example, that hate speech is more hateful the more specific it is. To call someone a nigger is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites."
  
• Intention: "Was the remark intended to wound, or intended to perpetuate some social wrong? Was it malicious?"
  
• Conviction: "Does the statement represent the individual's considered opinion?"

  All solid metrics, but we can't help finding the list a bit incomplete. After the jump we provide a few suggestions of our own. Click through and see how many you qualify for!
  

• Creativity: Anyone can call someone a "cheap Jew." It takes a hard-boiled racist with an advanced level of vitriol to refer to a tribesman as a "hook-nosed, Challah-eating Heeb."
  
• Universality: While everyone has one ethnic group they particularly can't stand (well, one plus the Jews), the real racist can hate the blacks, the English, and the Chinese at the same time.
  
• Irrationality: It's okay to hate Italians because they're greasy and they're all somehow connected to the mob. A true connoisseur of bigotry will despise them for something completely nonsensical, like the fact that they eat dead chickens.
  
• Obscurity: If your racism takes the form of loathing not just the Irish, but specifically the Irish from Innishannon, Co. Cork, you are a true racist.
  
• Mel Gibson: If you are Mel Gibson, you are a racist.

  Defining A Racist [Gladwell]

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