Ta-Nehisi Coates on playing “The Racist Card.”

The racist card is textbook strawmanship. As opposed to having to address whether her comments were, as Obama said, “wrongheaded” and “absurd,” Ferraro gets to debate something that only she can truly judge — the contents of her heart. . . .

The bar for racism has been raised so high that one need be a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party to qualify. Had John McCain said that Hillary Clinton was only competitive in the presidential race because she was a woman, there’d be no dispute over whether the comment was sexist. And yet when the equivalent is said about a black person, it’s not only not racist, but any criticism of the statement is interpreted as an act of character assassination. “If anybody is going to apologize,” Ferraro told MSNBC, “they should apologize to me for calling me a racist.”

Okay, okay: WE’RE SORRY YOU’RE A RACIST.

(Did I get that right?)