Do you think that the words racist and xenophobic are used as a "get out of jail free card" too much?

I think it can be thrown around too loosely, but generally it is the society's on going behaviour and or history that enables guilty persons to use the race card so often. I'm not so certain about the xenophobic part, Japan for example is well known to be a xenophobic society, less now than a some years ago but I don't hear persons using a xenophobia card very often.