Mag,
Of course I wasn't lumping you in with any racists. Your taste in cigars is too good for you to have such attitudes, frankly. Now, a communist, what with the Cubans and all that, well, that's another story...ha ha.
My point was that the imagery in the stamp and in this sand castle are the same. But people took this sand castle to be an affront to morality. Why? The presuppositions probably came from assumptions about them because of their skin color. That doesn't mean that people who make such an assumption are KKK members.
However, it should provoke some introspection, asking one's self the question "why did I assume that?" I mean, damn, with all the racially provocative images since 9/11, this assumption is practically drilled into us. We can't overcome this assumption, whose consequences (even if not intent) are racist (punishing a race of people because of that alone, not because of anything they've done), unless we are honest about quick associations and judgments we make. And it is OK to acknowledge that. Seriously, we only become better people when we recognize a slip, a fault, and then work to overcome that. That shows character, after all, when we admit that we made a bad assumption and work to prevent it from happening again.
That's a long post. Sorry 'bout that. But this stuff is important.
My 2cents.
John