Some thoughts on the “race card”

In Florida, the cars were spray painted with words like “Oboma [sic] smokes crack”

And “Oboma [sic] is a Nigger”

In Indiana, the windows were broken, more hateful words were scrawled, and an American Flag was stolen.

So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

In Nevada, fliers of Obama posing like a monkey, with a noose/lightbulb hanging over his head, were on the lightpoles.

In Georgia, they made Obama is monkey T-shirts. Hate groups like them so much, [warning: hate site linked] they sell them too under the motto “Buy this shirt from us, we won’t deny being racist!”

You know he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all of those other presidents on the dollar bills.

From a church:

From a T-shirt popular with Republicans:

On Republican TV sets around the country:

And yes, even in San Francisco:

Are many of us surprised by these images? Of course not.

What surprised us, what thrilled us was this:

You know, they said — they said — they said this day would never come.

They said our sights were set too high.

They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But, on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

Obama’s not playing the race card. He’s playing the Hope card. Hoping that America, and its media, will just say no to the agents of fear, of intolerance, and of hate.

When John McCain’s offices are vandalized, when signs in front of churches call McCain a terrorist, when hate groups make money by calling him subhuman, then maybe he’ll know what the race card is. But we all know that won’t happen.

They’ll never convince me that Obama’s campaign is a bad thing, something to be ashamed of. Never.