The US president does not want to be diverted by the race controversy, writes LARA MARLOWEin Washington
THE WHITE House is attempting to defuse allegations that attacks on President Barack Obama are racially motivated. Neither the president nor his advisers want his appearance on five Sunday television talk shows to be dominated by the issue.
“The president does not believe that criticism comes based on the colour of his skin,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs repeated at three different points during a routine briefing with journalists.
The politics of race have dominated political discussion since the former president Jimmy Carter told a television interviewer on Tuesday that racism in America “has bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the south but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country”.
The issue of racial profiling came to the fore in July, when black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested in Boston by an Irish-American policeman.
Mr Obama called it a “teachable moment” and invited both men to the White House for a beer. But he apparently feels it’s not time for another “teachable moment”.
In a landmark address in March 2008, Mr Obama spoke of “the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect”. But he also denounced the phenomenon of “tackling race as spectacle,” of making it “fodder for the nightly news”.
The right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh this week turned an incident on a school bus, in which a white 17-year-old was beaten up by two black students in a dispute over seating, into a cause celebre.
“You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay. Right on. Right on. Right on’,” Limbaugh said. “Of course everybody says the white kid deserved it. He was born a racist. He’s white.”
Professor of history at Tufts University, Peniel Joseph, says: “Jimmy Carter can be more frank than the White House because he faces no election battles.
“The White House doesn’t want a controversy where everything the president does is boiled down to race.
“That’s not helping his agenda or his ability to govern.”
But, says Prof Joseph: “It’s safe to say some of it is based on race: the opposition in the birther movement [which claims Obama is foreign], in the 9/12 movement [after last Saturday’s rally in Washington], the opposition to his speaking to school children, the rallies where people carry placards saying ‘Unarmed this time’.”
Mr Obama has been compared to Marx, Lenin, Hitler, the devil and animals at right-wing rallies. Demonstrators openly talk about him coming to harm.
A placard at the September 12th “tea-party” showed him in whiteface make-up, like old-time black entertainers. Last June, on being told of the escape of a gorilla from a local zoo, Rusty DePass, a Republican activist from South Carolina, said: “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors – probably harmless.”
Much of the racism against Mr Obama is insinuated. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that she “heard an unspoken word” when congressman Joe Wilson yelled “You lie” at Mr Obama last week. The unspoken word was “boy”, as in “You lie, boy”.
“Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it,” Dowd wrote.
When Republican politicians like Rick Perry of Texas and Tim Polenti of Minnesota talk about the 10th amendment, nullification and states rights, Prof Joseph says, they are using the language of 19th century advocates of maintaining slavery in certain states.
Since Mr Obama’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Centre has reported a huge increase in the activities of white supremacists, particularly racist websites and blogs.
“The charges of socialism and Marxism are certainly connected to race,” Prof Joseph continues. “The notion is that Obama is some kind of alien, a secret agent of communism, socialism or even terrorism. Among Republicans, there is a willingness to embrace aspects of this extremist right.”