From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/romney-pushed-boundaries-acceptable-racism-extremes
The Republican Party is treading back into the racism of Reconstruction.
By Adele M. Stan
November 2, 2012
A decade from now, if I’m asked to name the most memorable thing about the 2012 presidential campaign, it will probably be the sheer mendacity of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s rhetoric, lie piled upon lie.
But if asked what one thing about the 2012 campaign most impacted everyday American life, one answer stands out above all others: racism. The wink-wink racial coding Romney uses, combined with the unabashed racism of such surrogates as former Bush administration chief of staff John Sununu , adds up to quite a wash of race-baited waters over the campaign. Then add to that the steady stream of racist rhetoric that characterized the Republican presidential primary campaign, and the wash looks more like a stew set on simmer for the better part of a year.
Since the early months of 2011, our politics have been marinating in the language of racial hatred, whether in former U.S. senator Rick Santorum’s “ blah people ” moment, or former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s tarring of Barack Obama as “the food stamp president .”
Whether Obama wins or loses, new territory has been broken for the 21st century with the rhetoric of the Republican presidential campaign. Sure, it may seem like we’ve been here before, but the difference is that this time, it’s happening after we thought we had gotten past this level of racial hatred. But if Romney claims victory, having run on such a strategy, a new level of legitimacy will be conferred on the politics of race-baiting.
As Mark Thompson, host of the SiriusXM radio program, Make it Plain , said to me, “If they’re allowed to win this way, I shudder to think what happens next.”
The numbers don’t lie
A poll released last week by the Associated Press reveals an uptick since 2008 in the percentage of Americans who express negative attitudes towards blacks and Latinos. The poll measured both explicit expressions of racial prejudice and implicit attitudes.
Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/romney-pushed-boundaries-acceptable-racism-extremes
