For the record, my very own grandmother, a lifelong Minnesota/Michigan/Illinoisan who, to the best of my knowledge had never before voted for a Republican candidate for so much as the office of County Toilet Licker, told me that she was going to vote for McCain. Why? Because the Mayor of Detroit, (y’know, the black dude who got all scandal-ed up) was a terrible mayor and therefore all black people were crooks. That was the entire argument.

My grandmother isn’t necessarily flat-out racist in the stereotypical redneck sort of way. She can be uncomfortably racially insensitive, but I’ve never seen any indication that she thinks non-whites are inferior or should be treated like animals. She just told me that all black people are crooked administrators. Which is, most definitely, a form of prejudice and, since it’s based on race, a form of racism.

Anecdote, of course, isn’t evidence, but I personally know one person who made that bizarre leap from the Democrat to the Republican side in 2008. And I know why she did it. And it wasn’t because she agreed with McCain’s policy proposals.

Imagine a white dude who ran:

1. Following the least popular administration in the 20th Century (and that includes Richard Nixon at the end)
2. With the economy tanking into what looked like a replay of the Great Depression
3. With a platform on health care supported by 70% of the US population;
4. With a totally unprecedented amount of nickle-and-dime fundraising
5. against a Republican candidate
   1. who, on election, would have been the oldest elected President ever;
   2. whose running mate was less prepared for high office than Paris Hilton (a heartbeat from the Presidency!);
   3. whose only claim to fame in a lifetime of employment by the United States Government was his time as a prisoner of war
   4. Who bungled the campaign, to the extent of showing “leadership” by doing nothing (including campaigning) while the economy collapsed.

With all that going for him, BHO only drew a bit over 50% of the popular vote. Is there anyone who can say with a straight face that a white dude in the same circumstances wouldn’t have buried McSame like McGovern?

PS: Greg, the ordered lists are nice but sometimes unordered ones are more appropriate. Just sayin’

Cool. I can get behind that. Hell, that’s how I try to operate already.

I generally think that you should give someone the benefit of the doubt before you assume that their actions are motivated by racism. If you are sure, it’s still better to say that the action itself is racist, not necessarily the person. Why? In this day and age, racism is one of the worst charges that can be leveled by one person against another in the “court of public opinion”. To call someone a racist puts them basically outside the boundaries of civilized discourse, and even of civilized society. It can destroy careers and reputations. It is a charge that is difficult to refute and that will probably stick with the person for the rest of their life if they are a public figure. Therefore, it should be made only with great care.

The second major issue that bothers me is the “guilt by association” issue. Even if Wilson is a card-carrying bigot, the great prominence given to his otherwise insignificant outburst suggests a deliberate strategy of trying to smear all opposition to Obama and the Democrats with the brush of racism. The same thing applies to all of the emphasis being placed on the small numbers of openly racist people on the fringe.

BOTH sides have upset me. I didn’t think that Obama’s election marked the “end of racism”, but I had hoped that it would mark the effective end of racism in national political discourse, and at the same time the end of the use of accusations of racism as a form of character assassination for political opponents. It is now abundantly clear that it has done neither.

Finally, we have a black President and it is a change would you Joe Wilson make that out burst on President CLINTON, BUSH, CARTER or NIXON or RONALD REGAN.. I say putting the facts into its rightful place this out burst does play on the grounds of racism.

Unfortunately, the assumption of absence of racism is highly unlikely to be true for anyone. Nobody is completely free of bias, especially not unconscious bias. We all treat people who look “other” slightly differently – even though we might even treat them more nicely for it, rather than worse.

But even if #1 was justified, clearly at some point you should stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. But when? When is a pattern clear enough to say that a particular person or group has the appearance against them? I’d say that the vilification of Obama by the right wing has passed that point quite a while ago.

However, for some who posted here to complain about Greg’s post, it seems that unless a person or group explicitly says that they hate blacks, you should keep giving them the benefit of the doubt. And even then, I fully expect some to say, “well, yeah, THAT remark was racist, but that doesn’t mean THIS remark had anything to do with racism”…

People really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really don’t want to have to think about how racism is a factor that permeates almost every aspect of American culture and politics. Really.

Why else would there be so much loophole-seeking for why Joe Wilson’s outburst might not really be racist this one particular time, even if maybe he, yeah, might sometimes be a little bit racist (or something) but surely this particular thing isn’t necessarily about race just because it sort of seems like it could maybe be racist …

Is it because outing this [pretty obvious and clear-cut] case of racism puts people in the uncomfortable position of having to question a lot of things they’d rather not think about?

Done and done.

Paul @ 81: It’s just a disgusting attempt to crush disagreement under a blanket charge of racism.

And you make an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary proof. To wit: that anyone is claiming that there’s no such thing as legitimate opposition to Obama’s health care policies and that it is instead entirely racially motivated.

There are legitimate reasons to be against Obama’s health care policies. However, there is also more than a little bit of racist undertone to the knee-jerk anti-Obama outrage coming from the right. The fact that the current poster child is a known racist with ties to a racist organization underscores the specific point: that there is an element to Obama’s opposition that is not at all concerned with rational discussion of the points but is, in fact, pissed that a black man is in office.

The simple fact is that many people come in and say, “Well, this would still be happening if John Kerry or some other white guy were the one in office.” This is, as far as I can tell, not true. There’s been a measure of hatred directed at Obama since he tossed his hat in to the ring that I simply did not see directed against John Edwards or Kerry back in 2004. For that matter the right seems to hate Obama on a level that even Hillary Clinton hasn’t received. And the right has been hating her since 1992, so they’ve got lots of practice.

Pointing out racism doesn’t detract from the argument. Find someone who’s making logical claims and they can be engaged. Nothing logical is coming out of the teabaggers and Joe Wilson chose to call Obama a liar on a point on which he was demonstrably not lying (a point, it must be noted, which is also rife with racism). There must, then, be something else behind the shouting and vitriol. Racism is an extremely logical conclusion to draw based on the character of those screaming the loudest.

And racism is not something that can be allowed. We are not living in a post-racial nation and the election of Obama did not put all the issues to rest. If anything, it’s magnified the thing we’ve been trying so hard to ignore as a society.