Without belittling the evils of racism, I feel compelled to say that it is long past time for American society to stop overreacting to every allegedly racist “offense.”

Two stories in the news on Monday highlight the problems of hair-trigger racial sensitivities. In the first, two San Francisco area families are suing a Catholic school for $20 million for expelling teenage boys over a three-year-old incident supposedly involving the wearing of “blackface.” The parents quite believably say the substance at hand was dried acne medication. They said school officials jumped to conclusions in just four hours without doing real investigation of the circumstances.