Op-Ed: The Coercion of Race in Modern American Politics

Rep. John Murtha is the latest to declare whole swaths of the population as racist without providing any evidence. Are white Americans being pummeled as racists to stifle political debate, incur white guilt, deflect key issues, or all of the above?

The latest from Breitbart, via Drudge: "Murtha: Western Pa. 'racist' but Obama should win"

PITTSBURGH (AP) - U.S. Rep. John Murtha says his home base of western Pennsylvania is racist and that could reduce Barack Obama's victory margin in the state by 4 percentage points.

The 17-term Democratic congressman tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a story posted Wednesday on its Web site that, as he put it: "There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area."

He says it's taken time for many Pennsylvania voters to come around to liking Obama, but he should still win the state, though not in a runaway.

In a separate interview posted Wednesday on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Web site, Murtha says Obama has a problem with the race issue in western Pennsylvania that could shave 4 points off his lead in the state.

I ask you, on what evidence does Rep. Murtha make this statement? Where does he come up with his 4-point racist 'shave'? Are there Klan ennclaves in Western PA he's done a hood count on? Has the white population in PA been polled to see how many admit to being prejudiced against African-Americans? Or is it just a 'gut feeling' like the one Murtha blurted out about American soldiers at Haditha being cold-blooded murderers before the reports were even in? In that instance, all but one have been acquitted since, and Lt. Col. Chessani's case has been appealed by the government after being ruled as corrupted by undue command influence. One Marine is now even suing him for defamation. So much for 'gut feeling.' This also denies (or deflects from) the fact that Obama lost Pennsylvania by 20 points in the primaries, a loss attributed to his BitterGate comments in San Francisco just before the polls. Pennsylvanians would have resented that sweeping accusation of being 'clingers' just as much if it came from John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis or even Hillary Clinton. But forget about all that. Rep. Murtha, like many others, has already laid the groundwork for blaming any Obama election losses as being racist in nature. Everywhere you look, white Americans (conservatives and Republicans in particular) are being declared racists for everything from talking about Obama's close political association with William Ayers to Barney Frank's neck-deep involvement in the Fannie Mae mess. Sarah Palin has even been called racist for wearing a white blouse by some left-wing loon over at Democratic Underground. These kind of accusations are becoming the rule, not the exception. At Democratic Underground alone, there are no less than 160,000 hits on the word 'racism.' HuffPo beats them with 168,000 hits. KOS pulls up the rear with 65,557 comments and 166 articles that include the term from the past year alone. That's one every other day. Is white racism really this bad in America? If true, it begs the questions: how did Obama win a single poll outside of Harlem or South Central instead of garnering the nearly 18,000,000 mostly white votes in the Democratic primary? How does he maintain a lead over McCain today in the national polls of a mostly white America? Does not this fact alone deny all those premises of rampant white racism? As an egalitarian white American, I grow sick of being hammered with the slavery, Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan clubs every time I raise an issue about Barack Obama, William Ayers or even Jeremiah Wright, who is as racist as any cross-burning Klansman who ever lived. Is there racism in America? You bet. Racism is everywhere. It's an unfortunate part of the human condition. But the dividing line on race lies not with skin color but within the human heart, which has enormous potential for great good or great evil. Americans have been guilty of great racial evils in the past, even of institutionalized racism (as we are constantly reminded), but racism is now against the law in every corner of America by federal, state and local fiat, from education to jobs to housing and all points beyond. Those who blatantly engage in it pay a serious price. America today is not 1964 Mississippi. Even today's Mississippi is not 1964 Mississippi. What it comes down to, in this humble DJ's opinion, is that race is being used today as a political weapon by the media and left-wing Democrats to stifle political debate, deflect on key issues (as Barney Frank did vis-a-vis Fannie Mae) and incur white guilt, i.e. shame white voters into thinking they're racist if they DON'T vote for Obama. This is pure BS. William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and their decades-long close associations with Barack Obama are legitimate political questions, not racism. Whom we as ordinary Americans associate with makes no difference. For someone who seeks the presidency, and would have nearly unlimited power to appoint hundreds if not thousands of leaders in the executive and judicial branches in every corner of government in this land, from Supreme Court justices to Cabinet members to US attorneys, we as American voters have the right to know of those who may have influenced and shaped Obama's political philosophies, judgments, viewpoints and thought processes that he would carry into the White House with him. That all matters a great deal, for it reflects on the character, integrity and personality of the man who would be president, regardless of what color he is. So for me, every time I see the race card pulled from here on out, I will know that its roots are in ignorance, political coercion or even racism against white Americans by people who would brand whole segments of the American population as evil at heart based on their skin color alone. Is not that, by definition, racism in itself? In closing, as I've stated in a previous DJ OpEd, the constant crying of "Wolf!" vis-a-vis white racism carries with it the danger that real racism will be ignored, disbelieved or drowned out by racebaiters who see Klansmen in their soup. It is akin to a woman who falsely cries rape at every turn finding no sympathy from anyone when the real crime occurs. Lastly, I'd like to share with you a story on a Halloween display that recently made Drudge. It is of John McCain in a Klan robe and hood holding a baseball bat and chasing Barack Obama. A lone left-wing moonbat looney? Perhaps. But Georgia Verdier, president of the Elmira-Corning Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said after viewing a photograph of Havens' display that it seems innocuous enough, but she's still concerned it may send the wrong message.

"It looks friendly but I am concerned not so much about this display, but in general about the fear and hate that have entered the campaign," Verdier said. "This display appears friendly to me. But that's my take. A young lady passed by and had other feelings. We need to be concerned about that. I think we all need to be careful about what messages we send. The message we send is not always the message received."

So to Georgia Verdier, the head of the Elmira-Corning NAACP, the display is both 'innocuous and friendly enough.' What's wrong with this picture? And would Ms. Verdier still consider it 'friendly and innocuous' if the display were of Obama in a gangsta outfit and turban holding a gun to John McCain's head? Don't answer. It's a rhetorical question. And perhaps a reflection of the double standards and the times in which we live, unfortunately.