Adventures in the Metro, Volume 3: Paper Bags

Standing at the intersection of Vermont & K with my late breakfast in hand, a gentleman waiting for the same walk signal as I notices my bag and speaks:

Guy: You know, when I was growing up in New York, my mother told me that a white paper bag meant a high class sandwich.
Lee : Really? I had no idea. Now I can be bourgeois when it comes to my sandwich bags now.
Guy: There’s a hierarchy to everything. White paper bags, brown paper bags…. When I went to school, she always sent me to school with a white paper bag, too.
Lee : …
The guy kind of speeds up as if he needs to stop pussyfooting and get to getting’ when he abruptly slows down.
Guy: There was no rac—there was nothing racial by that comment.
Lee : (chuckling) You didn’t even have to qualify it.
Guy: Yeah, but there was nothing meant by that, at least not in my mind. Shit, you can’t say anything these days without getting yourself in trouble

…I can’t make this stuff up. Dude really just beat himself up on my behalf for sounding racist, and I wasn’t even offended. Now, writing it down, it kind of has a a little tinge of “WTF”, but I simply took it as friendly banter. His commentary by no means made me want to yell out, “Devil 6-6-6! Hitler has returned, Devil 6-6-6!” Wow, Barack gets in office, and people start openly checking themselves, huh? Wow. I guess this begs the question, have we really just gone way too PC over the last decade and a half?