I agree with Robinson .... people dance all around this issue, but few are honest or willing to face it.
What I wrote last year about candidate Barack Obama -- that to win he had to be seen as "the least-aggrieved black man in America" -- may be even more relevant now. To lead this diverse and fractious nation effectively, the president has to negotiate racial issues with delicacy, caution and tact. He has to give even his most vocal critics the benefit of the doubt.
But I don't. So I can say in plain language that Jimmy Carter was right in essence, but wrong in degree. It seems clear to me that some -- but not "an overwhelming portion," as Carter claimed -- of the "intensely demonstrated animosity" toward Obama is indeed "based on the fact that he is a black man."
Obama disagrees. "The president does not believe that criticism comes based on the color of his skin," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday. Obama is the most garrulous president in many years, but when a reporter asked him about Carter's remarks, he had not a word to say.
Nor do many other leading Democrats -- outside of the Congressional Black Caucus -- want to touch this explosive subject. As a matter of political strategy, I don't blame them. The minute you observe that some of Obama's critics seem to be motivated by race, the critics howl that they're all being smeared as "racists" simply because they disagree with Obama's policies. This is not true.
Of course it's possible to reject Obama's policies and philosophy without being racist. But there's a particularly nasty edge to the most vitriolic attacks -- a rejection not of Obama's programs but of his legitimacy as president. This denial of legitimacy is more pernicious than the abuse heaped upon George W. Bush by his critics (including me), and I can't find any explanation for it other than race.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091703566.html