We have no room for racist bigots, nor for the kick down politics that enables.

There is some truth to Pres. Carter's assertion, but only "some". He paints with far too broad a brush, and therefore makes just one more dubious contribution to the modern 'Cartoon Culture' (my own original description for current public sensibility). Cartoon Culture has no patience for complication, nuance, irony, or paradox. It tends to simplify all things to one or two slogans or labels, and it is incapable of assimilating subtlety of any form.

I ran into some of this during the Dem. primary: On more than just a few occasions,as a Clinton supporter, I found myself lumped-in with racists and bumpkins who were judged incapable of grasping Obama's unique appeal. I wasn't alone - whole STATES were tarred by the same crude brush.

We really need to be CAREFUL about this tendency. OF COURSE there are racists opposed to the President for that reason alone, but it's a serious mistake to assume that racism inevitably constitutes the CORE of all opposition. Politics is about many things, but we can all be thankful that it remains (so far?) mostly about POLICY.

If we ignore the honest reservations that many honest and well-meaning people have about the President's policy prescriptions, we're going to misunderstand the nature of the struggle we're in. That cannot be a good thing in the long run.

Can't happen fast enough.

Bottom line: if there were no African Americans and no African American President, these white bigots would have insisted on single payer decades ago. It's like the old adage: a Republican can only enjoy a meal if he knows someone else is hungry.

This is just great. I love it MJ. This one paragraph make the whole post.

Spot on !

C

Almost three-quarters of the country HREF="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/19/opinion/polls/main5098517.shtml">supports Obama's health care reforms - with the public option. Against the initiatives is a mixed bag of traditional conservatives and libertarians advocating midget government, the anti-tax middle class and... sure... I guess some racists. The most powerful nemesis, however, is the medical-industrial complex itself. Proposing such opposition is based on race is ridiculous. (I can already hear the stock argument, "Are you saying there is no racism in America?!!!") The public option is opposed by powerful interests with very deep pockets, and it has at least acquiescent support by the media (very little of which is owned by poor and working class folk). Racism probably will always be the scourge of this country, but asserting the health care issue is race-based serves only to reveal the paucity of imaginative strategy. As long as the Left couches the battle in old, familiar terms, it will delegitimize itself in the debate.

If there were no black people, white racists would have invented them long ago.

The south shall screw up again, but continue to deny it in typical stupefied fashion.

Racism isn't always hate; sometimes, perhaps most of the time, it's ignorance and fear.

Most racists don't wake up in the morning saying "I want to go do something mean to a black person" .... but if they lose their job or see something unpleasant on the street, they are far, far more likely to think, and believe!, that bad things are happening because black people are in the neighborhood - getting special treatment - are too numerous - aren't as intelligent/moral/whatever as whites - and so on.

Racists aren't even necessarily bad or mean people. When I was growing up about half of the older generation in my family would get up and leave the room if a "n****r" (the term they used) came on television, didn't think blacks should vote, wouldn't have let their children attend school with blacks or share a swimming pool with them (although we were free to play with, share meals with the children of the cooks and other workers at our home - hey, no one ever said it made sense!). At the same time, these people were not mean people and to my knowledge never intentionally hurt anyone - of any race. They even made a point to teach us that we should always be polite and respectful to any adult -- of any color. But, in their hearts they were racists .. because they believed that the color of a person's skin said many things about him and differences in color were differences that never could and never should be bridged.

I'm sure there area still racists in this country. But I'm also willing to bet that their inner beliefs on race are just a small part of who they are. And -- as long as they don't act on those beliefs in a way that affects us all -- they can believe what they want and it's none of our business.

The problem right now is that, as usual, there are some people who are angry at the President - about jobs, the economy, fears about health care, whatever. When some of those people are racists and are willing to act out his or her anger, it winds up being expressed differently, more dangerously for society, than it would be expressed if they were angry at a white president.

These people will be quicker to believe anything bad they hear about the president; more frightened of him, because he's so different/inferior; and much less respectful of him.

I don't think the teabaggers - any of them - are protesting simply because Obama is black; I don't think Joe Wilson thinks the President is a liar on health care because he's black. BUT the protesters are carrying guns, and putting vile, threatening statements on signs, and questioning the president's right to be president because of his "suspicious" birth.... in short, expressing their anger in a louder, uglier, and coarser way than they would if the president was white. ---- And Joe W., I believe, felt it is okay to shout out his opinion of the president in the middle of a very formal occasion when it's very, very likely that he would not have done so if the president were white.

So, in my view, while racism isn't causing anyone to oppose Pres. Obama, it is shaping the WAY that many oppose him. And it is the ugly, disrespectful and possibly even dangerous way the opposition is being expressed -- not the fact of the opposition -- that is the problem here. It's not as important how people feel or what they believe as it is how they are willing to act.

It's probably time to pull out Obama's Philadelpha speech and listen to it again. We - all of us -- need to learn to face these issues and to talk, calmly and civilly, about them when they threaten to interfere with our government or lives. That is the only way we'll ever totally put this needless, cruel, and so very wasteful division behind us in our hearts and heads. --- But in the meantime, we can, and should, be alert to how people act and insist that they observe the same limits and same rules that they should for any president.

According to Jimmy Carter’s libel against opponents of Barack Obama, “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is black man.” This reminds us once again of what a pathetic and mean-spirited figure Mr. Carter has become. But it is also evidence of how unhinged and desperate many liberals and some within the Democratic party are becoming. The hatred and fury that consumed them during the Bush years is returning with a vengeance. It turns out that the cause of their derangement during the Bush years may not have been Bush after all; he may simply have been the object of their crazed attacks.

Our national discourse plunged into the toilet long before President Obama came along. Whither Clinton, Bush or Obama, we seem to lose our collective civility when "our guy" is not in the White House. I'm guilty of it. Most of us are.

Yes, there is racism with the wing nuts, but it isn't the overwhelming majority like President Carter says. That's just sensationalist rhetoric to drive home the point. I think he could've phrased it better. For example: "The overwhelming majority of those who are yelling the loudest are racist."

Instead, it came across as President Carter was implying that most people who oppose President Obama are racists. That's a very politically charged statement to make. Some of the people who are opposed to the President's policies actually voted for him.

People don't like being called racists. It's a really easy way to poison the well for the mid-terms. Tread lightly.

"Bottom line: if there were no African Americans and no African American President, these white bigots would have insisted on single payer decades ago."

Political students of the old South Africa had a a name for this attitude: "Afrikaaner Socialism." And the apartheid regime certainly wasn't shy about using the tools of big government -- including racial hiring preferences, protectionism and generous subsidies for white families to make more white babies -- to keep its constituents happy.

The idiots at the town halls screaming against cuts in Medicare are sufficient to prove the attitude exists here as well -- not to mention the way the white working class turned against New Deal economics just as soon as blacks started getting a share of the pie, too.

At least the Afrikaaners were honest about what they were trying to do. Our lot can't even buy a clue.

MoO,'ll put it more simply.

1. Racism is the last refuge to which the leftist scoundrel clings. When they run out of facts and logic and still find the debate going against them, they deal the race card. This is an act of intellectual desperation and sure sign they're about to lose the argument.

2. And the negative consequences (for the left) don't stop there because, as RobbyLove pointed out, people don't like being called racists. When Democratic politicians start hurling this charge indiscriminately they're pissing off millions of swing voters, which will come back to bite them. Plus:

3. Being called racists by prominent Democratic politicians is the ultimate example of (excuse the expression) the pot calling the kettle black. Any fair accounting of racial injustices (in words and deeds) between the Dems and Repubs would show the Democrats far, far ahead. Given this deplorable history, Democrats might want to try something other than race-baiting - like seriously embracing policies that would deliver MLK's vision of a color-blind society. I believe the GOP is much more comfortable with this goal than the Democrats, and I offer this simple fact as evidence: in 1996, rank-and-file Republicans were clamoring for Colin Powell to run for President. He declined, but if he wanted the nomination he would have had it, and he would have probably beaten Clinton in the general. Now, I'm no fan of Powell, but this is not how a political party whose central organizing principle is racism would behave.

Resolved: racism exists in America, as in every other country on the planet at every other point in history. But the American political left is having a more difficult time than the center or right adjusting to the fact that, in the US, racism no longer has any material impact on public policies or the opportunities available to racial minorities.

Discuss.

"First, if you think illegals are not voting in large numbers you are fooling yourself."

No, they are. Also, they control the media. And they're stealing your chickens, and boning your sister.

da jews did it, an if'n it wasnt dem it was da darkies.

The intellectual war mongers are feeding them their little taste of frenzied notions day to day.

We need to be watching for the weaning when they throw the temper tantrum.

MJ, thank you for an excellent column. I used to teach a freshman orientation course at the university where I worked. The bulk of our student body came from an eight county or so service area that was 98% white. We used a little map of the world population to represent the world as a village of a thousand people. Eye opening. Fortunately we had a couple hundred international students also and recruited from outside our service area as well. Not as lonely for minority students as it used to be.

There is such a fear of the unknown in many communities. Anyone who is not homogeneous is a threat. I love the silver lining of LBJ plan. I like to say that we should be learning Spanish because it is the other major language of our hemisphere but I get funny looks for that. Kentucky was a border state in the civil war. We are still a state relying upon outside seasonal labor. One of our demographic specialists said we should be setting up welcome centers along our borders for legal aliens because we need them that much. Our hispanic population is still tiny but getting a toehold.