Jimmy Carter on Race: The Wisdom of a Peanut Farmer

There are two things that are apparent in light of the recent talk of race, President Obama, tea party protesters, health care, Joe Wilson, Kanye West and Serena Williams:

1) President Obama just may be a post-racial president, but...

2) America is certainly not a post-racial country.

Turn on any news program, read any magazine, listen to any talk-radio show and you will get a waterfall of people -- some of whom know exactly what they are talking about and others who have no idea what they are talking about but say anything just to get a rise out of people -- discussing race. This shouldn't surprise us at all. Historically, this has been a component of racial discussions. What should surprise us less is that all this talk gets us nowhere.

Enter Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, who says that much of the backlash against President Obama's policies have to do with bigotry. Great. New floodgate flies open. More rhetoric, more anal-retentive sound bites from people none of us should care to listen to. This is the cost of living in the nanosecond-information age.

But, wait, is Carter right? Is the backlash racist? Is he the one guy commenting on this who does know what he's talking about? Looking at it realistically, Carter's words are not as much commentary as they are a warning.

Prez 39 may be on to something here, being that he was a Southern governor, came up through the old boys' ranks in Georgia and saw early on the gratuitous racism that permeated the fabric of Southern culture and, in some instances, American culture. There's probably been more than one politician, lobbyist or political donor that he's seen shaking hands with black people, but calling them n-----s behind closed doors.

The reason his words are a warning is because the crazier people act, the more the attitude snowballs. Read up on Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma, 1921, to see what I mean.

But does that mean everyone who's got a problem with Obama's policies is a bigot? No. On the contrary, it is a very American thing to question even the most wholesome of public servants, because, after all, you're paying for it. Is everyone who goes to a tea party rally a tea bagger as well? No. Some are, some aren't. There are people who are looking for answers. There are people who have a political point to make, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Still, let's not get it twisted.

There are voracious racists also involved in some of these groups, people who feel that a black man being president is one of the greatest sins the country could have committed. This should not surprise us either. In November, there was a groundswell of cheers when Obama gave his acceptance speech in Chicago, and you would have thought all was right with the world. But you can best believe that at that moment there were people plotting exactly what you're seeing now, months before they knew anything about what Obama would accomplish.

As a black man, I have some authority on this, because I know what it is like to be in a professional setting where people mistreat you and even sabotage you, not because they think you're inferior, but because they know you can compete and that's a threat to what they believe is their birthright. So, in large part, modern racism has little to do with a belief that blacks and other people of color are less capable and more to do with haterism. Bigots are seeing that we can accomplish anything they can, and it pisses them off.

This is what President Obama is experiencing today, and it is no different than the experiences of Adam Clayton Powell or Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first black U.S. senator.

Not that I haven't experienced some of the same stuff from black people, but somehow it's easier to navigate intraracial haterade than it is interracial haterade.

So skipping over to New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks -- who contradicts colleague Maureen Dowd's piece (which I recently quoted) -- he argues that race "is beside the point."

Well, I don't have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama's critics, so I can't measure how much racism is in there.

But if he doesn't know how much racism is there, how can he say race is beside the point? Looking at his picture on the Times op-ed page, Brooks doesn't strike me as the type of dude who'd really know what it's like to have people trying to hinder his every move, with race being the unmentioned but underlying factor.

This isn't to say that he would have nothing to contribute to the dialogue on race, but one's perspective only comes from one's background and experiences, so he shouldn't be so presumptuous.

Back to Jimmy Carter, who some say has stoked a racial fire with his words. I'd bet these are the same people who said the O.J. Simpson trial caused major racial division in America. Dude, there's been major racial division in America since we got off the boat. O.J. didn't cause it and neither did Carter.

You want a solution to racism? That's easy. Quit listening to racists.

As for Joe Wilson and his "you lie!" quip during Obama's speech last week. Here's my take:

Dummy!

Nuff said.