FRACTALISED FRAGMENTED THERAPEUTIC BLOGGING: Joan Walsh @ Salon: The Blackening of the President

Thursday 17 September 2009

Joan Walsh @ Salon: The Blackening of the President

The following has been clipped from Salon via The Bilerico Project Report dated 16 September 2009.

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There's a portion of America that has insisted, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that the nomination and election of the first black president was proof that we've reached a post-racial society. The President's status as a biracial man largely raised in the Midwest was seen as a "safe" black man -- not of the traditional civil rights leadership often seen as an ornery bunch mucking in society by many. He was not the descendant of West African slaves, an origin that made many American blacks of that extraction suspicious of his racial fidelity.

But as the campaign wore on, we saw display after sad display of outright racism and bigotry (documented in dozens of Blend posts) emerge, stoked by the McCain/Palin campaign and the noisemakers on the right. But the vile behavior seemed to come from a demographic we all knew was below the surface -- people who would never vote for a black man under any circumstance. It all died down for a millisecond -- a period of calm after the inauguration, but the full-out attack was cooking as the anger at the reality that Barack Obama is President sunk in when he started affecting policy and approach to governing.

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