Jimmy Carter’s political touch remains, it appears, eternally off-key. After a summer of simmering right-wing dissent against the Obama administration, and a protest march by about 70,000 conservative activists in Washington, Carter declared that most opposition to Barack Obama was rooted in racism.
He was responding to the unprecedented heckling of a sitting president from the floor of Congress by a good old boy from South Carolina, Joe Wilson. This is how Carter put it — and the nuances matter:
“Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national programme on healthcare. It’s deeper than that. I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man ... That racism inclination still exists. And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”
Few words would have caused Obama more heartburn than these. Obama has, from the start, emphasised the nonracial and post-racial aspects of his politics. He feared that if he were to become the black president, rather than the president who happens to be black, something deep in the American psyche would kick in, and he would be marginalised for good. In the campaign, the Clintons went up to the edge of this tactic, with Hillary at one point appealing directly to “white voters” in the South, and Bill dismissing Obama as another Jesse Jackson.
more . . .
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6841197.ece