Despite the gains made by minorities during the Civil Rights Movement and the numerous other acts promoting equality in the United States, the “race card” is still being played by blacks who feel they have been discriminated against. As the 2012 elections draw near, voters would be loath to recall the importance Obama and his supporters placed on race during the 2008 election. The fact that Obama was young, hip, and had the potential to be our first black president heavily overshadowed the fact that his political roots lie with incredibly racist figures such as Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.
Various videos on YouTube of Wright preaching to an all-black church in Chicago saying such things as “God damn America as long as she acts like she is God and supreme” gave Americans a glimpse of the pastor that Obama took his family to every Sunday. And William Ayers, now professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a former member of Weather Underground, an anti-US group that bombed the Pentagon, Capitol building, and other US government buildings. Although he was never convicted for his terrorist ties, he was quoted after 9/11 by a reporter, shamelessly saying that he “doesn’t regret setting bombs, [I] feel we didn’t set enough.” Obama’s ties to Ayers are evident with his holding campaign events at Ayers’ own home and his admission that he helped him with his memoir, Dreams from My Father. The fact that these relationships were completely overlooked by anyone except maybe Fox News shows how badly America wanted to believe that the election of a black president maybe meant the beginning of a post-racial society. This hope could no be farther from reality.
During the campaign and even after Obama made it to office, he and his supporters used every chance they got to claim Republicans were racists. The liberal news media played a significant role in this respect. For example, Texas Governor Rick Perry referred to “a big black cloud that hangs over America, that debt that is so monstrous.” No rational-minded person would automatically assume Perry really meant Obama as the black cloud, instead of the debt. However, the left is not rational, which is why MSNBC’s Ed Shultz claimed just that. Any time Republicans vote against one of Obama’s unemployment benefit measures, they are called racists. Practically any time a white person disagrees with Obama’s ideas, he/she is called a racist. Furthermore, one issue that has been beaten into the ground, but still not resolved is Obama’s birth certificate controversy. Everyone asked, “If he really is a US-born citizen, why can’t he just produce a hard copy, not a picture on the Internet?” Obama and his supporters played the race card on this issue, claiming those who wanted proof he wasn’t born in Africa were racist bigots. So, for the sake of our country, let’s hope this 2012 election is a fair and honest one…which may be a tall order in a place that is still blinded by the color of people’s skin.