Racist?

Only in America would a congressman who was complaining about Mexican illegal immigrants be accused of bigotry against an African-American president, while Tea Party protesters are accused of refusing to accept a president who's black, when what they're plainly upset about is that he's Red.





On Tuesday, a parade of Democrats complained that South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson's "You lie!" comment during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress was racist.

Congressional Black Caucus member Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, said this: "I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside intimidating people. That's the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked. Congressman Wilson represents it. He's the face of it."

And then the august and austere voice of former president Jimmy Carter chimed in with this, in an interview with NBC News: "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. 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."

If President Obama was the man he professed to be during the campaign, he would use one of his hourly television appearances this week to call for an end to this kind of bogus race-baiting rhetoric.

The country didn't mysteriously suffer a bout of amnesia during the 2008 election cycle, only to awaken in August of 2009 to the news that the president is black. It's absurd and insulting and desperate for Democrats to characterize a legitimate argument over deficit spending and federal government intervention in health care as racial bigotry.

President Obama can demonstrate genuine leadership by making a clear statement that people who disagree with him about health care reform are not racists because of it.

Silence is acquiescence.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: By ascribing good motives to everyone and working backwards, America Wants To Know has identified the origins of today's argument. You can read about it in the earlier post, "Why we're fighting."

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