[atlas]

Guys,

Well now we are all racist. I guess I need to disclose this fact of me being a racist to my Jewish wife. I'm sure she needs to know she is married to a racist. I have tried to hid this fact from her for years, now my dirty little secret is out!! I know many on here must also be racist as you are anti Obama. So all of us racist need to repent and make this right.We need to vote for Obama and I need to try to make this right with my Jewish wife that I really do hate. I have also been lying to her for years telling her, " I love you, " therefore I also need to repent for the sin of lying to her and her Jewish family. I can only hope I am forgiven for my SIN of racism.




Atlas


http://www.mlive.com/grpress/news/in...ontrovers.html

Barack Obama 'pseudo controversies' hide racism, news anchor says
by Juanita Westaby | The Grand Rapids Press
Thursday October 09, 2008, 8:58 AM

Racial divide: Ray Suarez, a PBS correspondent, says those who continue to spread the false rumor Barack Obama is a Muslim are hiding other fears.
GRAND RAPIDS -- Following an unpopular president, supporting a costly war, and now facing a financial crisis at home, Sen. John McCain's race for the presidency should be in worse shape.

"What makes John McCain plausible is Barack Obama," news anchor Ray Suarez told a local crowd Wednesday.

The "pseudo controversies" about Obama's background are symbols for a "racial calculus" hard at work in U.S. politics.

Opinions about Obama's inexperience, his childhood in Indonesia, and the persistent but untrue rumors of him being Muslim are stand-ins for something his detractors cannot admit, Suarez said.

Particularly, "religion has become a proxy for race," he said.


Characterizing Obama as Muslim "is a way to confer otherness on him for those people who are uncomfortable saying they're against him because he's black."

Suarez spoke at Fountain Street Church as part of the Diversity lecture series. He is the senior correspondent for PBS's "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and former host of NPR's "Talk of the Nation" program.

Suarez said Republicans are leaving it to vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to "pile on the doubt" about Obama's religion.

"The Republican brand" began to slide after the re-election of President George W. Bush, he said.

Suarez pointed out white evangelicals have noticed that, after having a Republican president and Congress for a majority of the last eight years, little got done for their causes.

"There are signs that there are cracks and fissures in that alliance," he said.

Black evangelicals, by contrast, have traditionally voted Democratic, he said. Last year, Suarez published "The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America."

Hispanics, who helped Bush attain the presidency, were angered by 2007 anti-immigrant sentiment.

"It will take years, perhaps decades, for the Republicans to get back to the levels (of Hispanic support) they were at in 2000," he said.

Despite all that, Suarez isn't optimistic about record numbers of minorities at the polls.

"It's always the next election" that minorities are supposed to show up for, he said.

It's the same thing for the youth vote, said Suarez, who has covered politics for 30 years.

"I've been waiting so long on the youth vote that the youth I was first waiting for are now middle-aged."