A summary of several racist events since election day:
• In Standish, Maine, a sign in the Oak Hill General Store said, “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. “Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count,” the sign said.
• Elementary students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted, “Assassinate Obama,” a district official said.
• University of Alabama professor Marsha Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur, she said.
• Alie Kamara, a black teen in New York, said that on election night he was attacked with a bat by four white men who shouted, “Obama.” Police said Saturday that two 18-year-old white men were arrested Friday. Ralph Nicoletti and Bryan Garaventa face charges of hate-crime assault and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.
Jesse Taylor argues, "I can’t help but somehow feel that the mainstream political movement that’s branded Obama personally and black people in general thieving, anti-American threats to our national sovereignty is somehow, possibly, responsible."
That's absolutely right. And it's an effort that grew out of the Lost Cause mythology and reunification effort of 100+ years ago in which African Americans were scapegoated and demonized in order to help reunite southern and northern whites -- to rally white people around a common enemy. And yet the Republican Party, factions of which continue to employ a form of this tactic, is somehow taken seriously as a major American political party.