Obama accused of racism

As racist politics go, it's pretty palid and pathetic.   Think back just a short way to the Willie Horton ad that helped Bush I defeat Michael Dukakis and to the rumor that John McCain fathered a black child (he and Cindy adopted a dark-skinned girl from Bangladesh) that helped Dubya defeat him in South Carolina in 2000.

BTW the slime-ball who made the Willie Horton ad is working for Mitt Romney's campaign.

But there it is, anyway.    Someone dug up a 22 year old video of Harvard law school student Barack Obama introducing and then hugging Derrick Bell, Harvard Law School's first tenured African-American professor.

So how is that racist?   One black man hugging another?   It takes a little explaining.   See, these days -- according to the right-wing nuts, anyway -- the only racists left in America are those genuine extremists on the right and . . . ahem . . . those extremists on the left who try to get rid of racism by calling attention to it and trying to change it.   If you just ignore it -- and have a few token blacks around to prove you're not racist -- then you're above it all.   Not racist.  Get it?

The occasion for Obama's introduction of Bell and the hug was a rally in support of Bell and his decision to take an unpaid leave of absence to protest Harvard Law School's failure to offer an African American woman a tenure-track position.

Now it's clear.  Right?    Bell was a racist for claiming that Harvard was being racist in not hiring this black woman.  Obama was in his corner.   That makes him a racist too.

Ralph