To me being called racist implies that he is doing it maliciously. Maybe that’s not the correct use of the word but there are tons of words now that are used to describe such behaviors like unconscious racial bias, prejudicial, ignorance etc.

I guess to some people it’s hard to call him a racist when there are moments in the show where he shows genuine love for people in the Office. I mean he really does appreciate Oscar, and he really went the extra mile to try and get Stanley not to switch offices when he truly believed that he was going to lose him.

Yes he does commit a lot of racist and homophobic actions in the show but it’s hard to label someone that shows genuine love to these people as a racist or a homophobe because while his actions are incredibly misguided and inappropriate they do come from a place of love. In my mind I don’t think he finds any race or person inferior or dislikes them because of their color, he just doesn’t know how to correctly handle these social situations or puts comedy above social tact which is what drives the show.

That’s my two cents anyways. I briefly browsed the thread and I don’t think anyone was saying that his actions weren’t racist, or homophobic (I’m leaving out sexist because I think that’s another issue and I do believe he is a sexist). When people think of racism for the most part they think of malicious behavior and that’s where this conflict comes from here.

I think we as a society might need to re-examine some of these words or definitions because they have changed and grown a lot within the past 100 years or so and there are many academics have very different definitions of racism then the one defined in the Oxford dictionary.