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Racism or Just Plain Rudeness?

Posted by in Discrimination, Hot-Button Issues, Politics, Racism


I was very disappointed to hear former President Jimmy Carter imply that Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst had to do with racism.

Frankly, I’m a little disappointed when every single conflict involving two people of different races or cultures or religions or sexual orientations is always painted as being solely because of those specific differences.  Everything is not always, pardon the expression, black and white.

When Republicans crticized then-candidate Hillary Clinton, several people were quick to play the gender card.  Ironically, most of them happened to be women.  Carter is not black, of course, but he seems certain that racism is the primary reason for opposition to Obama.

Joe Wilson is a white Republican.  There are plenty of people who will automatically assume from this that he can only be racist.  He’s from South Carolina, a state that has stubbornly kept a Confederate Battle flag flying on its statehouse grounds through a “compromise” to remove it from the statehouse dome.  Racism is indeed alive and well here, just as it is everywhere else.

As much as we like to pretend, there’s no getting rid of it.

But it’s at least as likely that Wilson was caught up in a blind, wingnut-fueled partisan “fury” and just got carried away with himself than that he’s just upset because a black man is in the White House.  Some of the anger and scare tactics that has stained town hall meetings across the country probably have a great deal to do with fear and resentment of an African-American running things.  Here we are, in the 21st century, with people who still believe that the only black man in the White House ought to be a Stepin Fetchit-type in the kitchen.  And those people deserve to be called out for their sentiments in this day and age.  But Wilson could just as easily have been caught up in the wildfire without ever having involved with striking that particular match.

On the other hand, it’s also possible that racism was totally involved in his outburst:  but a racism against Hispanics, the folks who make up the majority of the illegal immigrants he wants everyone to believe he’s so against helping with taxpayer dollars, despite a vote for a bill which contained a provision that did precisely that.  Again, it need not be because the President of the United States happens to be a black man.

I heard a newscast run a snippet of Rush Limbaugh yesterday in which the host stated that anyone who ever criticizes Obama will automatically be branded a racist.  (Personally, I doubt that this will stop him, even if he believes the stuff he says.)

I really hope that’s not the case.  People who have serious objections to parts of the health care reform bill — or any other policy being pushed for by the Obama Administration — need to be able to voice their concerns and have them taken seriously…without being labeled as something they might or might not be.

Even if you line up 100 Obama opponents and you find that 99 of them are racist, the remaining one might just have a point of view the rest of us need to hear, instead of being grouped into a collection of outdated thinkers who aren’t worth our time.