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So, is it racist to vote for Obama simply because of the immutable characteristic of his skin color?

MarkO: Depends on what you mean by ‘racist’. I suppose it could be. But it would be far worse to pretend that we can be ‘color-blind’ when we vote. Race denial is a way of avoiding the same kind of guilt mentioned in the Slate essay. Everybody (yes, even minorities) sees race and has some kind of opinion about it whether they are willing to admit it or rationalize it away.

The key fact that makes someone a racist is usually ignorance. A racist seldom bothers to learn or even think about the true source of their feelings about race. Or whether those feelings are based on accepted facts or just cultural and societal impressions. Or even whether acting on those feelings is the ‘right’ thing to do.

Of course, the hard-core, admitted racists have thought about these things, they just choose to rationalize their opinions with faulty and ignorant evidence.

Here is longtime Democratic operative and founder of Cambridge Research Associates Pat Caddell on “Hannity and Colmes” Friday night: “Obama is a tool of the Daleys. If the mainstream media were not so busy shielding Obama, they would be examining that relationship…my party registration does not mean that I sacrifice my judgment.”

Obama is Prince Hal and I guess Biden is his Falstaff. Caroline Kennedy makes a big deal on “Meet the Press” about how deeply vetted Biden was: how deeply cynical is that. All the big Greenwich hedge fund plutocrats are backing Obama, because his tax policies will not only not touch them, but will send billions more to their way, to offshore funds and other instruments beyond the scope of the government. We actually have a better chance going after the hedgers with McCain. No candidate (other than Nader) is advocating real reform: a wealth tax, restrictions on commodity speculation to those who take delivery of such commodities, repeal of the kind of regressive taxes you see on your utility bills, SEC regulation of hedge funds. tariffs on certain imports that will allow the rebuilding of our industrial base, the reimposition of the Glass-Steagall regulations dividing commercial and investment banks, and the reinvigoration of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. On these issues Barack Obama (who praises Warren Buffett) is as right wing as Reagan, James Baker, and Donald Regan, the criminals who launched the USA into a debt based economic structure. The United States is so close to a Depression that even symbolic issued of racial justice are relatively unimportant. As Pat Caddell said on “Hannity and Colmes” two nights ago, “As a child of the civil rights movement, I wept when Barack announced for the President…now I am convinced that he is a tool of the Daley machine.”

“All you people out there who oppose Obama on issue grounds, I have no quarrel (except on the issues) with you. But you should know that your anti-Obama cause is being befouled by racists”

On the one hand you say it’s ok to oppose Obama on issue grounds, but one the other hand you then try to link those same opponents to those who oppose Obama on purely racial grounds, thus essentially tarring all anti-Obama people as simple racists.

There are plenty of valid reasons (his ties with radical groups like ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation, his shady Daley/Chicago machine ties, his more-left-than-Kennedy-or-Clinton voting record despite his rhetoric about ‘post-partisanship’, his lack of adminstrative, diplomatic, military, or foreign policy experience, his more-extreme-than-NARAL pro-abortionism, etc.)to oppose Obama, and to tag opponents as being on cahoots with racists is itself merely part of the racial double game the Obama campaign is playing. He want’s to be seen as “post-racial”, yet he also clearly wants to use his own race to his advantage and to subtly tarr opponents as racists or fellow-travellers with racists.

For a candidate who claims to be “post-racial” and “post-partisan” he and his worshipers (yes, worshippers - see the latest YouTube video “American Prayer”) seem to have a fixation on race (read his first book - suffused as it is with racial obsessions, resenment, and anger). Funny how it’s ok for over 90% of blacks to support Obama and not be called racists, but if over 90% of whites supported McCain, we’d hear no end of talk about how racist white voters are.

I could almost feel the fury in Ron Rosenbaums article. The damning conviction he has that all Republicans are racists and all racists are Republicans.
My objection as a Republican is that I suspect he means “its all your fault”.
If he means its racist to deny a black man what he insists is his ,then we have no apparent defense against the use of that fact as a weapon. Sort of like the use of the word by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and dozens of others who love to accuse and convict people on that basis .
The white race gets convicted on the one time existence of slavery but never a mention of the defeat of that evil by the same white men. You could call it a one sided observation.
But nothing will apparently satisfy the true racists who will forever see only one truth through a single prism.
Blacks in America are free and have been for quite some time . We need to see some indication that black Americans understand what Mr. Cosby has been telling you for years. Get over the temptation to see every single aspect of your existence as a racial affirmation.

Dennis…Marko…Jonas…get serious.

Ron didn’t say that being against Obama makes you a racist. And you know it.

I was at a small dinner for Henry Kissinger on Monday (he was just back from Beijing). Kissinger remarked, “I talk to Biden frequently. He is brilliant.” Kissinger also said that he thinks Obama will win, that he (Kissinger) is advising McCain, that Obama’s charisma will “last his three weeks” on the world stage, that there is a schism between the Chinese Army and the Party which Kissinger feels will cause instability in China, and that he is “close friends with Obama’s foreign policy team

I asked only how Ron defined “racism.”

Mr. Mack, apparently you didn’t read my post, or the quote from Mr. Rosenbaum’s article that prompted it: ““All you people out there who oppose Obama on issue grounds, I have no quarrel (except on the issues) with you. But you should know that your anti-Obama cause is being befouled by racists”

He may not say that being against Obama necessarily makes you racist, but the thrust of the above quote is subtly to link all Obama opponents to mere racists by claiming that the “anti-Obama cause” (falsely assumed to be some unified monolith) is being befouled by racists, and that this does necessarily implicate non-racist opponents (”you should know…your cause”, etc.). Sorry Ron…but MY cause is not being befouled by racists, because MY cause is much larger than mere opposition to Obama personally (on racial or any other grounds). MY cause is based on oposition to the fundamental political principals and ideology that he and his party stand for. He is merely the latest standard bearer for an odious statist ideology (not the the GOP is any better these days, having largely become statists themselves).

I wept unashamedly when Barack’s nomination became official. Did Barack cry, too? I don’t think so.

MarkO, who are you trying to kid?

We can all scroll up and read what you asked. It was not ‘how do you define racism’ but instead asked about whether it would be considered racist to vote for Obama because of his skin color. Not only are those two different questions, but your question carried the additional implication that racists may be voting for Obama rather than against him as Mr. Rosenbaum stated.

Now, racists may indeed be voting for Obama if you choose to define racists as people who aren’t afraid to acknowledge that people have different skin colors and may consider that fact when they make voting decisions. But that is a valueless and misleading way to look at racism. It’s a lot easier to avoid the risk of feeling guilty about race if you choose to define every conscientious, thinking person as a racist. That’s why I presented a more useful and more commonly accepted definition.

Maybe try looking at the actual arguments and goals of equal rights rather than just assuming they want everyone to be colorless (or white).

I really think this goes beyond slavery and ‘greatest national sin.’ It is about supersessionism as perhaps intimated in Isaiah 22:

I will thrust you from your office and you will be cast down from your station.. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David

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Catholicism and Christianity have taken this attitude toward the Jews almost to their extinction. And Jews have sought a moral position(s) that superseeded that of the dominant culture. So we have these tussles in which the moral ‘key of the house of David’ is sought to ‘thrust those from office’ in really a supersessionism of its own.