When the transcript of Food Network host Paula Deen’s trial for workplace harassment was leaked, the reaction was nearly universal: “Hoo boy, is that woman unbelievably racist!”
Or was there something else that bothered us about Deen’s behavior? In an incisive essay at Salon, Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay argues that it wasn’t so much the racism that shocked us, but rather the breaking of social rules about disguising racism:
This entire debacle reveals that there are unspoken rules around racism. There is a complex matrix for when you can be racist and with whom….In her deposition, for whatever reason, Deen decided to break these rules or ignore them.
