How Racism Works

Here's a telling little list of "what ifs" that I lifted from my good friend BAC over at Yikes!.

It's an interesting exercise in perception:

• What if Michelle Obama walked 5 kids including a pregnant 17 year old on stage? Would racism change the perception?
• What if a video surfaced of Michelle Obama being cleansed of witch craft by a black preacher?
• What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
• What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
• What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said 'I do' to?
• What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife at the age of 42 (for a 22 year old heiress) after she no longer measured up to his standards?
• What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
• What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
• What if Obama were a member of the 'Keating 5'?
• What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If the answers to these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the poll numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does: It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

I had naively hoped --believed -- in my youth, that we would be past all this crap by the time I got to this advanced age and started to enter my senescence.

Sadly, I was wrong.