Hi Minnie,

I would say it's splitting hairs to say that you didn't call posters sexist/witch-burners etc. but called what they wrote sexist/witch burning. Not so much a subtle difference as malarkey, methinks. There are rules of civilized rational political discourse that would have people critique arguments on the basis of those arguments -- their internal coherence, their logic, their adherence to the facts -- rather than on name-calling of the argument.

About Hillary being holier than thou -- Please go back over the political posts here on OurChart and you'll find that -- contrary to popular belief -- it's been the Hillary supporters and not the Obama supporters who have engaged in idolatry. (And, yes, what I did there was characterize/critique what you wrote with a pejorative broad brush ... So I'm not calling you an idol worshiper, I'm just saying that what you write is idolatry. Subtle difference, eh?)

Do More Than in 2004,
Melanie
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than Americans are willing to acknowledge. Check out this interesting op-ed (which I posted on another thread previously) that challenges our notions about racism. Yes, there will always be a segment of the population who are overtly racist, and fortunately that population has dwindled. But the number of people who hold latent prejudices that they're not even aware of has held steady. Why? Because it's very difficult to have an honest dialogue in America about race, which is one of the reasons I'm grateful for Obama's candidacy, because it has FORCED the issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05kristof.html?hp

From the article:

For decades, experiments have shown that even many whites who earnestly believe in equal rights will recommend hiring a white job candidate more often than a person with identical credentials who is black. In the experiments, the applicant’s folder sometimes presents the person as white, sometimes as black, but everything else is the same. The white person thinks that he or she is selecting on the basis of nonracial factors like experience.

Research suggests that whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about — in other words, in ambiguous circumstances rather like an electoral campaign.

For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.

“In the U.S., there’s a small percentage of people who in nationwide surveys say they won’t vote for a qualified black presidential candidate,” Professor Dovidio said. “But a bigger factor is the aversive racists, those who don’t think that they’re racist.”

Faced with a complex decision, he said, aversive racists feel doubts about a black person that they don’t feel about an identical white. “These doubts tend to be attributed not to the person’s race — because that would be racism — but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience,” he added.

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