Hillarysworld

Read @ The Nation

Bush's Nadir

Melissa Harris-Perry November 9, 201


Excerpt:

As an observer, I find the 2010 midterms uncomfortably familiar to the era of Redemption that followed Reconstruction. Current calls for small government and states rights during the administration of a black president sound suspiciously like 19th century efforts to weaken the state so that racial terror could be enacted with impudence against the black men who were then governing. After the aggressively anti-immigrant and more subterranean anti-black sentiments of the health care debate and the midterm election I have wondered if we lost our ability to be shamed by open displays of cultural bigotry and political action motivated by white anxiety.

In this sense I welcome President Bush’s comments. At my most optimistic I can read his comments as an assertion that nothing is more harmful than racism, nothing more embarrassing, nothing more un-American, nothing we must more fully and completely renounce. I know that is not exactly what he said, but I take a glimmer of hope from the idea that President Bush has reminded us that to be called a racist is not a badge of honor.

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Very thoughtful article.  Sure made me sit back and think.