This ain't the sixties. White folk can't march around hollering "nigger" while we cower. It amazes me how the right wing doesn't get that. Sooner or later, somebody is going to get hurt. When the first shots are fired, they won’t be aimed at the president. They'll be aimed at some kid. Some black kid, some Latino kid, wandering through a park where these nutwing Tea Baggers are standing around hollering. The first acts of violence won’t have anything to do with politics or healthcare reform or taxes. It’ll be some black kid giving these racists the finger. Some homeless guy asking for a handout. The shot will ring out. And that will be the war.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele, the Republican Party's most prominent African American official, has issued a press release criticizing former President Jimmy Carter for arguing that much of the opposition that President Obama is facing is due to race.
"President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn't about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president's wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn't create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation...
As I wrote several months ago, being a black man willing to criticize President Obama is a real growth industry. Steele, who has been under fire from his own party for being, essentially, impotent and incompetent, has a vested interest in pleasing the wingnut crowd. But his unnecessarily bellicose and rabid new release only further undermines his standing, as he insults a president who himself has coolly played down the race issue. All of this posturing, on both the president and Mr. Steel's part, is for the benefit of white folk, as no black man, woman or child in America believes even a single word of Steele's statement, and recognizes the president's initiative as more political than substantive. Mr. Steele is a man headed for political oblivion and he knows it. The minute Barack Obama is no longer in the Oval Office, the GOP, who regularly eat their young anyway, will show him the door faster than he could ever imagine. I'm not quite sure what career track Mr.. Steele believes he is on, but he's being used--and knowingly so--by racists. At the end of that usefulness, he will have no friends and no future. I can't imagine what his play is, here.
