Some Obama Criticism is Racist: Carter

Someone making a claim doesn't make the claim true. But someone making the claim based on some expertise on the subject gives the point some validity, or at least raises larger questions.

During a town hall in Atlanta Tuesday, former President Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter said that Rep. Joe WilsonJoe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's speech to Congress last week was based on racism, specifically the fear or belief that an African-American should not be president.

As someone who follows the news, perhaps more closely than most, there was no doubt in my mind that a significant portion of the criticism around Obama's... well, anything he's has ever touched, looked at or thought about, comes from a racist place. But I always reserved that judgment for the teabaggers and the birthers and the people who doctored photos to make President Obama look like a witch doctor (I'm not sure why they didn't use a photo of the witch doctor who exorcised Sarah PalinSarah Palin, but I digress). I never thought, or wanted to think, that Republicans in Congress could be capable of being racist in their demeanor. After all, they have an ideology to protect (whatever it is).

However, it's worth nothing that Rep. Wilson loves his confederacy. He's a past member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and he was one of the state lawmakers that wanted to continue flying the Confederate flag at South Carolina's capitol building. Using the right-wing definition of loyalty to country, the former is like being proud that your ancestor was allied with Benedict Arnold, and the latter is like voting to contnue displaying swastikas around Germany.

Now, this doesn't mean that Rep. Wilson was thinking racial epithets as he shouted, "You lie!" But I think President Carter's comment taps into the fact that there is still underlying racism in ths country, and some people learned to live with diversity because it ultimately didn't affect the balance of power. But now that an African-American is in the White House, all those latent fears are coming to the surface.

I grew up in Virginia, and I saw traces of that old time racism. Some houses flew the Confederate flag. The town's high school was segregated until 1966. My mother once told a story about a friend of my dad's sayng, "I have no problem with black people, as long as they know their place." In my high school, dating an African-American was worse than dating a guy in jail.

This all happened a full century and change after the Civil War ended, in Virginia. I don't have any anecdotal evidence of the Deep South, but President Carter does, and I imagine he saw much worse than that, so I'll take his word that something is going on that transcends ideology and politics. Obama has been labeled a witch doctor, a Muslim, a terrorist, an Arab and a foreigner, and some Republicans in Congress and in the media have called this honest political protest. Glenn BeckGlenn Beck accused him of not liking white people. In a recent Facebook exchange between former classmates on both sides of the aisle, one woman said, "That half-brown clown has to go."

Joe Wilson would never get away with saying such a thing, but given his background, I wonder if he would have disagreed with the sentiment.