The lesson is that you pick and choose your battles wisely and understand and communicate your outrage in a cogent, unassailable and proportionate manner.

And while we're on the topic of racism, and commentary about how outrage begets outrage:

It is such a tiny, tiny jump from Stein's faux-satire to this.

Divyendu Sinha, a 49-year-old scientist and professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, died Monday morning after he and his two sons were attacked while going for a walk in Old Bridge last week. Read On...

The boy, who I inevitably rant to, nodded (before we knew of the Divyendu Sinha story) and sagely added that several of these happen everyday and go unreported. More subtle day-to-day biases get easily brushed off.

Hell yeah, I vote reflection over reaction. I agree with the idea that we need to pick and choose our battles...wisely, even. I'm with you when you assert considered outrage cogent communication. My only conflict (with myself more than anyone else) is with the line, between burshing it off, and doing something about it.