Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Reality check for anyone who thinks racism is dead

Depressing article in this morning's Washington Post:

Racist Incidents Give Some Volunteers Pause

An excerpt:

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

Doesn't surprise me much as I've been the recipient of some pretty twisted and hateful e-mails forwarded by acquaintances whose politics are a tad more to the right than my own. I do have a fairly good idea of how the wackaloons back in the hollers, so to speak, are thinking, but I can see how it could all come as a shock to college kids who are obviously far more cosmopolitan and open minded than the small-town Bubbas they're running into.

Saying it's been unreported is kind of an understatement, too. If anything the MSM media has been falling over backwards repeating a "racism is dead/racism doesn't exist/Jeremiah Wright is delusional" mantra.

Oh well, I'll just keep my fingers crossed that the most ignorant members of the general population are also the same folks who are too lazy (or stupid) to bother to register to vote.

3 comments:

  1. ok..is anyone really surprised...?...in dallas a black family moved into a nice middle class white neighborhood and got a sign on their yard saying 'niggers live here'...makes me sick..

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  2. A couple of months ago, at a regular meeting of the Chequamegon Democratic Club*, the local Hillary Clinton campaign coordinator got up and said, straight-faced, that the party would be making a huge mistake to nominate Barack Obama because the country would never elect a black President. Then she had the nerve to try and blame it on the South.

    Someone pointed out that the southern states wouldn't be likely to favor Clinton, either. When she tried to carry on the debate, she slipped and referred to "colored people" and the booing and jeering kind of overwhelmed her.

    She didn't even show up the following month.

    *Screw the Hatch Act; I'm retired.

    ReplyDelete
  3. No Surprise. Since, I teach at a racially mixed school racism really cuts me on a personally level. Recently, our baby told that her friend's family has some racists beliefs. I'll be weaning her from that situation.

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