Playing The Race Card

By: Harry Waisbren

"Get Your War On" has come out with a new video making fun of how ludicrous McCain's attacks on Obama supposedly playing the race card are. Check out the video below:





This video does a great job of pointing out how disturbing these attacks of "playing the race card" really are. It has become a form of racism in itself through the assumption that no one is racist in this country any more, and that anyone fighting this conventional wisdom is a reverse racist.

Considering how thoroughly Reverand Wright dominated the media narrative of the primary campaign, this narrative should have been thoroughly debunked a while ago. Since then we've also had a racist Obama t-shirt sent to the Congressional Black Caucus, a website selling a racist Obama sock toy, pins being sold saying "If Obama is elected can we still call it the White House", and much more. Hell, Obama was event called "boy" by a congressman, who wasn't even subjected to any accountability for his blatant racism!

The accepted racism in our political discourse is why Digby astutely recognized that Obama has to play by Jackie Robinson rules if he is to prevent full on hysteria within the beltway. Ignoring these problems is a huge deal though, as the McCain campaign is using racist dogwhistles against Obama like calling him "arrogant" or "presumptuous" instead of uppity.

Karl Rove knows what he's doing with these attacks, and it's up to all of us to fight back against the conventional wisdom that this sort of racism doesn't exist and isn't intentional. Fortunately, as Chris Bowers noted today, such attacks are dramatically increasing the resolve of activists to fight against the ignorance and hate that the Republican party has come to represent.

After all this, their official slogan should be "You're Not Racist, You're Just a Republican!"