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So anyways, not to be an asshole but if you want to present legitimate arguments, as contrasted with straw men, really.. study the policies and come up with some. Hucking numbers and facts around removed from context gives you the straw like framework of arguments, but, like the scarecrow of old, they appear to lack brains.

It is simply annoying as hell, and frankly it makes people take you less seriously. I both love and hate reading your stuff; love it because I know there is something to be learned from a point of vew that I might not always consider, and hate it for the reasons given above. This of course makes me react badly, and thats on me, but still, just saying.

Mine are quite favorable.

Although, to be honest, I don’t think the problem is the word, but the binary thinking that goes with it. Racism, as a concept, is just fine…we just need to think of it as a spectrum rather than an on/off switch.

Now that I think about it, we need to move away from a black or white interpretation of racism. :)

And yet, even if Dowd and I are correct that Wilson’s outburst was motivated by dislike for blacks, I’m not entirely sure that I, or anyone else, should care. Consider a hypothetical: Wilson, we can presume, would have been pleased as punch if the new black president were a Republican and were up at the podium singing the praises of small government and sending immigrants back to where they came from. This thought experiment does not exonerate Wilson of the charge of racism; what it does mean is that we are talking about a racism more complicated than the bigotries of old, a racism intertwined with other brands of animus (against liberals, against Democrats, against elites) to an extent we can only speculate about.[...]

That subliminal racism plays a part in some people’s criticisms of our president is being addressed as a problem. I would argue that it is more realistically observed as a fact, one that is unlikely to be completely absent in any human society. We have outlawed deliberate segregation and discrimination. We have rendered bigotry socially incorrect, to the extent that it now lies somewhere between smoking and pedophilia. Can we do more than this? Do we need to?

Dismissing the proposal to admonish Wilson formally for his outburst, Barney Frank quipped, “I don’t have time to monitor everyone’s civility.” Frank is right. It is certainly not pretty that some people’s take on Obama is likely mediated by racism. But the phenomenon is less a matter of open bigotry than a breach of civility. Who ever thought that all people would be civil at all times? And who ever thought, given the inherent imperfectability of humankind, that racism is somehow different from our other flaws and could be subject to complete elimination?

That’s what I meant when I kept caveating with “keep in mind, when I say racism plays a role, I mean that in a value neutral way” statements, expressed a lot better.

What’s more, on the core issues, I think we’re taking up two different sides of the same Venn Diagram but don’t necessarily agree.

Rojas and mw: I certainly concede that attempts to use discussions of race as ways to delegitimize real policy disagreements is hucksterism, and ought to be treated as such. I also certainly concede that one need not be racist to oppose Obama, and I would guess 99% of those who oppose Obama do so without race being a singular factor.

I would hope you’d be prepared to concede that there IS a racial subtext to the Obama oppositional movement writ large, and that one can attempt to have that discussion without A. delegitimizing policy disagreements, or B. painting with that binary brush I mentioned earlier, that someone is either a racist or not.

I think we’re essentially arguing on our defense mechanisms right now. You guys are automatically heckled by any entry of the word “racism” into a discussion where it may not be the primary issue, or certainly may not be the issue that most concerns you. That’s certainly understandable given the way the race card is played.

My defense mechanism is that I get heckled when I perceive an attempt to shut the door on a discussion of race which, while surely not what you’re saying, is the impression I had been getting. As I keep reiterating, I think there is a very real racial subtext to MOST of the opposition to Obama, but listen very carefully here: that does not mean I believe racial issues is the primary, most important, or even most worthwhile motivating factor. I just think it’s there.

Bear in mind also, it’s mere presence says NOTHING about the value of the specific ideas or policy differences proffered. One can, of course, be a screaming racist and be perfectly right about health care reform (N.b. mostly I am not at all talking about the screaming racist variety of racial subtext, just using it as an example here). One can also be the most colorblind kumbaya American possible and have that lead you down a path of idiotic anti-tribalism tribalism where it concerns policy matters. Those are the two polar extremes, but even anywhere along the rest of the spectrum (where most of us live), that you are influenced by race does not discount your myriad other influences, or the ultimate worth of your idea(l)s.

That said, I will offer one sort of value-laden thought. It is my hunch that the racial subtext does not dominate the opposition, or is even a very conscious element of it, but that it does feed into the militancy, vehemency, and intensity of it. I don’t know that it’s even as an important a contributing factor to it than just the present state of partisan game-playing politics (which I would guess is the chief contributing factor), but it’s there, and it’s significant. That is just a hunch on my part, but it’s not just an academic thought. It directly negotiates into the thought that the present level and character of opposition to Obama is all just a clean ideological division (a thought I sort of advance in my Ron Paul post, or at least play around with), and is not instead a complex soup of factors which includes ideological divisions but also includes a lot of cultural/political/social divisions that are important and sometimes just as important (those might include partisanship/tribalism (the “us vs. them” mentality fed, at least in part, by Obama being very Not Us), racial issues, a sort of kick-back alienation of conservatives freed from the yoke of the Bush years and now metaphorically running naked through the streets that they can argue based on principles again, etc.).

So, about the furthest I am going to go in terms of the significance of the racial subtext is say that it feeds mightily into the intensity of opposition to Obama, in large measure because it dehumanizes him and makes him more of an “Other” in the us vs. them calculation than would be the case if we were talking about, say, a John Edwards type (even accounting for the fact that Edwards would be governing far, far more liberally).