Racist or not?

According to West Brom Blog or Dafink respectively, Nigel Hastilow is not a racist, he is "an a***hole" or "stupid".

Frankly, it has become almost completely pointless debating whether someone is racist or not, because there is always the "I am not a racist, some of my best friends...." defence. Like with Jim Davidson. His best friend is Chalkie (or used to be until he made jokes about him).

I have come to the conclusion that there are three options:

1. If any person regards someone else's remarks as racist then they are.

or

2. Everyone is racist.

or

3. No one is racist.

I tend towards number 1.