I have had a hell of a week, and am still trying to adjust back to some sense of normal, but I feel compelled to respond to this.
If you think that accusations of racism against Senator Obama are overblown, you are seriously kidding yourself. The truth is that there is a hell of a lot of racism out there, some of it blatant, some of it more obscured. Having grown up in a white middle class neighborhood and attended mostly white schools, I myself did not really become quite as self-aware of the passive racism I was myself displaying until I got into the Army. But once I had some of my fellow grunts point it out to me, my eyes opened. Many of we white people have this head-in-the-sand idea of racism - if WE don't see it, it isn't there. But racism, like sexism in many ways, is often in the eye of the beholder.
I think another of the biggest problems regarding racism in this country is that the overwhelming majority of white people only recognize open, active racism (i.e. using the N word, joining the KKK) and fail to recognize more subdued, or more passive racism. I think most people, including myself, are guilty of this to one extent or another. But some of us are definitely worse than others. and a lack of self-awareness is one reason. For example, one thing that makes a lot of us look stupid (and it is so widespread that I have seen it referenced many times by black comedians and in movies) is the whole "I am not racist, I have a black friend" or "I always say hello to the black person at my office, so I know I can't be racist" or similar things. It's like Jamie Foxx said - and I am paraphrasing here - if you are counting how many black people have been to your house, you are a racist motherfucker. If you are in a car (with white people) watch what people do when you stop at a crosswalk. I have seen people lock their doors if a black guy was in the crosswalk, and do nothing if a white person was. Come on, this is Alabama, not Los Angeles, and that is definitely a passive form of racism.
But we go further than that too. Remember, like I said, racism is often in the eye of the beholder. So if you are black, and you hear white people constantly belittle the NAACP, or talk about how Martin Luther King Day should be celebrated as Lee-Jackson Day, or make fun of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and other black leaders non-stop, or that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery (but it's still all the abolitionists' fault) or say that Donovan McNabb is only getting attention because he's a black quarterback and not because he is any good, what are you going to think? What are you inclined to think? The column you put up by Glenn Beck is a great example. I know, you are probably thinking "but he says he isn't racist". Well, blaming the current economic crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act, and thus poor minorities (as many conservative commentators have explicitly done, such as Neil Cavuto on Fox and Ann Coulter in her columns), is racist, sorry. The CRA has very little to do with the current mortgage crisis, because the institutions most responsible for the bad loans - the independent mortgage lenders - are exempt from CRA. CRA did not make any financial institution offer no-down-payment mortgages, or force any banks to put commercials on TV encouraging Americans to use the value of their homes like an ATM machine so they can pay for their kids college, or buy a car, or take a vacation, or buy a boat. I saw plenty of those kinds of advertisements through my own bank, Regions, and many others. CRA did not do anything to undermine oversight of all these financial institutions. CRA had nothing to do with how these financial institutions turned bad mortgages into investments by bundling them together by the thousands into investment vehicles that concealed the exposure of the investments to these risky mortgages. I could go on and on, but I will save that for another time.
And having grown up here in the South, I know all the little tricks that we white people use to try to hide racism. I know all the little codes and catch phrases. So for example, when someone uses the word "uppity" to describe Senator and Mrs. Obama (and I have heard several people in the news say it), I don't care what the goddamn dictionary says, I know what it means. That's like someone saying "it's getting dark mighty early around here" when a black person enters the room, and then trying to argue about what the dictionary definition of those words are. Context is what matters. I know the goddamn context. Try to use the word "uppity" in reference to Senator Obama in conversation with any black person that you are friends with and see what happens.
I hope I am clear here, L., because I am not trying to put you on the spot. But I think you are giving many of your fellow conservatives WAY too much benefit of the doubt. I think that there are still a lot of people, Republicans AND Democrats, who still can't bring themselves to vote for a black man for any reason, and are willing to believe all sorts of bizarre bullshit like "he's really a Muslim" or "he pals around with terrorists" or "he's going to take away all our guns" in order to rationalize their illogical fear of him.
