I’m interested in a general view of this phenomenon, because I want to know the ways in which I may be nigger-taxing people (even if only slightly) without realizing it.

In the drug store we only know that she boycotted one person – we don´t know why, and perhaps it was not because of race, it may have been because of other attributes.

The pizza story provides two data points. Both the guy who would have received service (we know that he had no relationship with the restaurant) and the other one who was ignored and stated that this happened every time. The pizza story is therefore a more accurate depiction of race discrimination.

However, boycotting people based on appearance attributes is of course taxation. So I stand corrected having defined “nigger tax” as race discrimination when it is appearance discrimination.

If there is a fundamental difference, I’d say it is that the “beauty subsidy” is based on positive feelings for the beautiful, along with unconscious indifference to the less beautiful … while the “Nigger Tax” is driven entirely by conscious hatred of the “Nigger.” In the former case, our response to the unusual is positive and not conscious, in the latter it is negative and conscious. That may be what vindicates the beauty subsidy as being less pernicious.

Let’s first analyze the stories told on the weblog you refer to, at first pass they all seem to convey the same message – but actually since we don’t know the facts leading up to each situation, they might be very different.

The story about the pizza place is obviously taxation, but the drug store not necessarily.

Let’s assume that the woman in the drug store had requested (and even promised) a day off around Christmas. Unfortunately at the last minute someone got sick and she was called to work. She is now angry being working on Christmas day and almost refuses to work. However due to her private incentives she chooses to serve her friends in the neighborhood when they drop by, because these are her friends and she doesn’t want to let take her grievances out on them – but the white guy in the story, whom she has no connection with and is very likely from another neighborhood, is the perfect candidate to show her boss how little she wanted to work.

This is also what is happening in the case of a beautiful woman, a single man (in the search of a girlfriend) will undoubtedly respond differently to any favors asked by a beautiful woman than a man who is happily married. This has to do with personal incentives and hope of reciprocity rather than “race subsidy”. You actually want to show this person that you are nicer to them than you are to the average person.

This all boils down to the twofold meaning of the word: “prejudice”. The first and neutral meaning is: “opinion formed beforehand, based on insufficient knowledge” and that is very difficult to change, we all do it and often we need to. If you were hiring a programmer and got one thousand applications you would have to use some kind of prejudice to determine who gets an interview. A person with a masters degree in computer science is more likely to get an interview than an uneducated person – even though it may lead to “false negatives”. On the flip side of “prejudice” is irrational dislike of somebody – and I agree with you, that is an awful act.

Sorry for the long reply…