[Ebon]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Oh there is this really insidious meme on the Right now that liberals are the only racists. I absolutely kid you not. There is a writer, Mike Devine who wrote--I am not pulling your leg, I'll have to find the link to it--an essay defending Rush Limbaugh over the whole buying the St. Louis Rams drama from a year or two ago. Over the course of his piece, he relates this idea that liberals--who have no black friends and don't have black employees--are racists while a man who uses the n-word but has black employees isn't a racist. Yes, you read that right.

Here he is in his own words:

Many people would label a person as a racist for using the n-word, yet I have known many that use it, that have many black friends and hire black people and [treat] them well. Conversely, I know many, mostly liberal whites, who would ostracize people that would ever use the n-word, but who never hire blacks and have no close black friends.

I'm not sure how loosely he is using the term 'friend' here. I would hope that none of my friends would use the n-word. I know that any friend of mine who did and I heard them say it, would not be a friend of mine for much longer. But that is the meme. You can use the n-word. You can, it would appear, make any manner of racist statements you wish and not be a racist.

That's the meme, though. So conservatives have absolutely convinced themselves that, for instance, showing the White House with a bunch of watermelons in front isn't racist. A picture of AF 1 with the tail-number changed to N1663R isn't racist. Even the white supremacists have convinced themselves that they aren't racists--they just love white people. You can say anything you want about black people. You can make whatever racist jokes you wish. But if you work with a black person you are de facto not racist.

The one thing I expect to see is that at some point over the course of the next Presidential election, someone at a Palin rally is going to say something. Either the warm-up speaker or, if it's a town hall, someone in the audience. It's going to be blatantly racist and it'll just slip out. The audience will largely applaud depending upon the venue and how fired-up they are. And then that politician is going to have to make a choice. Do they repudiate the statement then and there and thus piss off the base or do they just move on, letting the statement sit there without comment. I don't know what the statement will be, I don't know who it will be about but I suspect it will be about Latinos--although something blatantly racist about Obama has lots of precedent--but it's going to happen. It'll happen because conservatives have convinced themselves that nothing they say is racist and since they have spent the last decade talking mostly to themselves and the last 2 years talking *only* to themselves, they all think that everyone else in the country thinks about these issues just as they do. They're wrong. They're going to find out just how wrong they are over the next few years.

Wow!!! Well maybe they will say some of this stuff that they don't think is racist to their so called "black friends or colleagues" and start getting some knowledge and/or ass whippings. Then we will see if they still think it's racist. You should check out the website http://blackpeopleloveus.com/ . It's totally fake but I think it's pretty funny and spot on.