The New GOP Con--Obama the Reverse Racist

In quick succession J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney, strongly implied in his testimony to the Civil Rights Commission that the word came down from on White House high to the Justice Department to dump a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Adams just as strongly implied that the White House put the word out to play hard ball on discrimination cases when the victims are minorities, and soft peddle the same type cases when the victims are white. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch quickly announced a lawsuit against the DOJ to hand over documents on the case. Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh gassed that Obama hates America (meaning whites) and that he's deliberately torpedoing the economy to "pay back" the nation for 230 years of racial sins against blacks.

Any other time, and with any other president, this would be treated exactly for what it is, sheer lunacy. But this not any other time, and the president is Obama. The suspicion that always lurks close to the surface is that an African-American, once in a position of power, will turn the tables and "pay back" whites for the decades of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, abuse, degradation and exclusion. The two-decade assault on affirmative action firmly implanted the widespread belief that unfit and unqualified minorities -- and especially blacks -- were hell bent on shoving whites aside and grab all the plum positions. It was reverse discrimination and racism. It was a short step from this to the notion that racism is virtually dead in America, except for the racism of blacks. This set the stage to tag Obama the reverse racist.

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