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Notes -
A more charitable read would be that by blithely denying the label and then agreeing dismissively and moving on he demonstrates a level of disdain/apathy for the label. He doesn't care whether he technically meets the dictionary definition of the word "racist". It's a word. He cares about [crime statistics] and object level concerns. Having the confidence to take one for the team and say "if you're going to derail the object level debate and go on some unimportant tangent about whether I'm a "racist" then fine, I'll let you win this point, since I don't expect any of my audience to care anyway, so we can move on to something worth talking about."
He's not taking it seriously, but in 2025 taking a debate about whether someone is "racist" or not seriously is pointless. Everyone just uses it to mean people they don't like. I would argue that Morgan defected first by bringing it up in the first place, so a sarcastic dismissive reply to that particular point and then a transition back to something that actually matters is an appropriate debate tactic that doesn't make me trust him less.
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