Having spend the first half of my life in what at one time was the progressive state of Wisconsin and the second half in a Southern Confederate state I seem to have a different take on race than most. I have personally witnessed the stark differences on the subject between North and South. My guess is that up North about 40% of Whites are racists while down South it’s about 60%. And if you were to use "Southern Born" that would be as high as 75%. I can also say that about half the email I get from "friends" is about Obama, watermelons and nose bones.
It is not popular in most any circles to lay "racism" upon the Tea Party, Republicans, conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or even Michael Savage. Rather it is their game to push the insane BS that it is Blacks who are the racists and whites who are the victims of the African Americans. It is much the basis of what the Republican Party now stands against, the keyword being "multi-culturalism".
Accusations of racism is one of those things that said out loud upsets far too many White people. And if one upsets the majority of White people they change the channel to Fox News and their votes to the GOP. Oh, and their phone votes to Bristol Palin on Dancing with the stars [which is a loud vote from stupid people against smart people.]
In fact the media itself has chosen to replace the word "racism" to the more conservatively correct "nativism". Nativists are different because their bigotry is expanded to include Mexicans and Muslims who are not specifically "Negro".
Though being somewhat of a lone white wolf on this subject once in a while I do see some validation.
I noticed just last week that E.J. Dione from the Washington Post did a column, Is the Tea Party out to banish Bush-style conservatism?
In it he contends that the Tea Party movement at odds with the GOP is not so much about debt or economics, but in response to George W. Bush’s brand of "compassionate conservatism" which reached out to blacks in education (No Child Left Behind) and Hispanics in comprehensive immigration (allowing those already here to stay). Here again the word "racism" has been corrupted by the Right to mean "reverse racism" or again the more popular term they constantly rail against, "multi-culturalism".
Also last week came a column by New York Times columnist Charles Blow who took to the issue head on in his column Let’s Rescue the Race Debate.
The latest evidence of this comes in a poll released this week that was
conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Religion Research
Institute and financed by the Ford Foundation. The poll found that 62
percent of whites who identified as Tea Party members, 56 percent of
white Republicans, and even 53 percent of white independents said that
today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as
discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Only 30 percent of
white Democrats agreed with that statement.It’s an extraordinary set of responses. And my question is the same one
used by the right to defend the Tea Party against claims of racism:
Where’s the proof? There’s a mound of scientific evidence a mile high
that documents the broad, systematic and structural discrimination
against minorities. Where’s the comparable mound of documentation for
discrimination against whites? There isn’t one.We can find racial prejudices in all segments of the population, but
pretending that the degree and consequences are comparable is neither
true nor helpful. And attributing to the agitation of the “colored”
masses to the self-aggrandizement of a callous few is truly detrimental.In fact, some on the right seem to be doing with the race issue what
they’ve done with the climate-change issue: denying the basic facts and
muddying the waters around them until no one can see clearly enough to
have an honest discussion or develop thoughtful solutions.