A Question Of Race In America

Two stories in the last 24 hours have brought the question of race in America to the forefront once again. First, Jimmy Carter believes racism is a factor in the attack on President Obama.

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter told NBC in an interview. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans"

Continued Carter: "And that racism inclination still exists. . . . It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply."

The 39th president also predicted that Obama will be able to "triumph over the racist attitude that is the basis for the negative environment that we see so vividly demonstrated in public affairs in recent days."

Second, a white student in St. Louis was attacked on a bus by two black students, the incident captured on the bus's camera, but school officials now say the attack was not racially motivated.

A student on a Belleville West High School bus was beaten for his choice of seat, not because he was white, according to a witness and police.

"The incident appears now to be more about a couple of bullies on a bus dictating where people sit," said Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax, who originally said Monday's attack may have been racially motivated.

D'Vante Lott, 16, said he was on the bus and witnessed the attack by the two black students.

The victim walked onto the bus, looking for an open seat, but students kept turning him down, as D'Vante said happened often with this student.

But Monday, the victim apparently tired of asking for a seat, D'Vante said, moved one student's book-bag off a seat, and just sat down.

The student next to him then started hitting the victim for moving his bag, D'Vante said.

Both these incidents raise uncomfortable questions (especially at 7 AM on an average Wednesday morning.) Not every attack involving people of different races in America involves racism. Some are more obvious, some more subtle, some are blatant, some are misconstrued.

But it's the reaction by the Wingers to these two news items that is very telling. Wingers don't believe there's any racism towards Barack Obama, and in fact many of them believe that saying that attacks against the President are racially motivated in any way are in fact proof that those who do are racist themselves. Meanwhile, the bus fight in St. Louis is in fact prima facie evidence that President Obama himself is responsible for a massive anti-white crusade in America's streets, as Publius points out at ObWi.

Let me echo Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher and Conor Friedersdorf in condemning the utterly shameful and race-baiting exploitation of yesterday's school bus incident. I'm not big on writing posts that start "Rush Limbaugh did outrageous thing X today...", but this is an exception.

And it's not just Limbaugh. It's also Malkin, and Gateway Pundit, and Drudge, and Tom Maguire. Though Limbaugh takes the cake:

It’s Obama’s America, is it not? Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering[.]

So here's the basic dilemma. On the one hand, there's nothing ambiguous about this. It's straight-up George Wallace-style race-baiting. It's an intentional attempt to stir racial prejudices.

Limbaugh & Friends took a random fight and immediately tried to pin it on Obama (some less directly than others). And after the police quickly backed off claims that it was racially motivated, the corrections either didn't come or were merely one-liner updates inappropriate to the gravity of the previous charges.

But even if it was racially motivated, what on earth does Obama have to do with it? The answer is nothing other race. The only goal here was to stir up racial resentment and then pin it on Obama. I'm sorry, but this is infuriating. We shouldn't be putting up with this in 2009.

But here's the thing -- there's no way to win. If you ignore it, they get to race-bait. If you cause a big stink about it, it will have the effect of putting racial tensions in the news. And that's exactly what they want, because it hurts Obama.

The reaction to this is very much blatant and horrifying. We're to the point now where 250 days into Obama's term and the Wingers are openly trying to pin every single possibly racist incident on Barack Obama, claiming he is personally and single-handedly responsible for racial animosity in this country.

The message is crystal clear, that Obama is a threat to whites in America, and he should be treated as such. We've gone straight to full, pedal-to-the-metal racism here in just a matter of months. I've been warning for some time now that this would only get worse, and now we've got El Rushbo, Malkinvania and company so far over the line that they can't see it.

They want war, open and bloody. And there are those who are willing to take up arms for this disgusting cause, and have the willingness to use them.

Things have gotten a hell of a lot more dangerous this week in America.