We witnessed it during the presidential campaign with the incessant profiling of voters by media along racial lines.
We witnessed it when repeatedly white teevee anchors wrung their hands over whether the black candidate could win the white vote. Surely, we were told, the Bradley effect would be operational.
We witnessed it when on day one of a new black president's taking office, a popular-with-conservative-white-guys, and obese radio talker called for the new black president to fail.
We witnessed it with the tea-bagger gatherings where only one theme was recognizable and coherent…..conservative whites dislike having a black president.
We witnessed it with all the phony accusations that this new black president is really a secret Muslim.
We witnessed it, and are still witnessing it, in the entirely phony fabrication that Obama isn't even an American citizen and should be deported.
We witnessed in during the media buildup to confirming a Latino woman to the Supreme Court. Pious pricks on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the opportunity to scold a highly qualified minority woman, wagging their fingers warning her she had better not be pre-biased against whites.
We witnessed it in the Ricci case when 5 conservative Justices basically declared that affirmative action was officially over….all judicial activist style.
We're witnessing it now with the Professor Gates imbroglio.
What is it it we're witnessing?
Misplaced fear by the majority. The disingenuous ginning up of fear that the 60% majority American whites are under attack by those conniving minorities.
Contrived, self-victimization in a land where majority whites have historically discriminated against minorities…and still do.
I'm not sure whether the battle for America's soul is already over and the dark forces have won….or whether there's still a chance for redemption…..but what we've been witnessing for the last year or so has been ugly…..and I'm not even including the Bush/Cheney regime in my estimation.
Pat Buchanan, the daily MSBNC spokesman for majority whites currently under siege by minorities, spews forth what many white conservatives in America actually believe. Whites wrote the Constitution, we're the ones who fought and died in the Civil War, and "probably" were "100 percent of the people who died at Normandy", and therefore, whites have earned the right to govern the country.
To listen to mainly white conservatives, the most imminent threat to America is the threat of white Americans losing their "earned" right to rule the country in some onslaught of "reverse discrimination."
It's nauseating.
I watched the black and white teevee in my youth when blacks were batoned and fire hosed and beaten like animals. I paid attention when in 1968 MLK was assassinated for being too uppity while black. I saw what those who Buchanan said have "earned" the right to govern America did to poor, defenseless blacks.
And now some 40 years later, I see what people like Buchanan, and Limbaugh and many, many other conservatives are doing. The message hasn't changed, even though, thankfully, the methods have.
A black president and a Latino woman on the Supreme Court, to these white conservatives, is evidence that whites are under seige in America. Whites, these conservatives continually tell us, are now the victims. Majority whites are the ones now being discriminated against.
What we're witnessing is simply modern American racism…..and it's pathetic.
