Of course it's about race

Former president Jimmy Carter finally said what black people have known all along. Much of the controversy over President Barack Obama is about race.

That's not a news flash for black Americans. But it does reveal how racism is so ingrained in our culture that we automatically dismiss those charges when raised by the victims themselves and only validate them when "objective" white people say so.

The former president made his news splash in a meeting at the Carter Center, in which he revealed "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president."

Referring to the birthers, the deathers, the teabaggers, the town brawlers and the old yellers, Carter said "those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care."

"It's deeper than that," said Carter.

Of course, he's right. And, of course, the usual suspects on the far right rushed to deny that race had anything, absolutely anything, to do with the old white guy from South Carolina yelling at a young intelligent black man to stay in his place.

They even carted out Rep. Joe Wilson's son, Alan, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general in Georgia, to declare that "there is not a racist bone in my dad's body," as if his father, who grew up in the segregated South and worked for former segregationist Strom Thurmond, somehow never managed to be affected by all the racism around him in a state that still flies the Confederate flag.

Of course.

Instead of attacking the problem, the conservatives immediately attacked Carter, calling him "senile" and accusing him of "playing the race card."

Of course again.

None of this is surprising. It's a script as old as Strom Thurmond himself. The problem isn't racism. The problem is the people complaining about racism. White people don't have a single racist bone in their collective bodies. It's those black people who are the racists.

Fixed News and Boss Limbaugh don't see race either, unless of course a "good" white man is losing out to an "unqualified" colored. And Barack Obama doesn't want to dwell on race, lest he be pigeonholed as just a "black president" with a preference for his own kind, unlike all those "white presidents" who cared so much about black people.

But it is amusing how some progressive whites are finally realizing that this racism thing is not yet over. Just last weekend, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd gave in to the dark conspiracy theories.

"I've been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer...had much to do with race," Dowd wrote on Saturday. "But," she added, "Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president...convinced me: Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

A black law professor I met once explained why white people don't see racism the same way that blacks do. Being black, the professor explained, it's like wearing a huge U-shaped magnet around your neck. When you wear a big magnet, the first thing you notice is how much metal there is in the world because it's instantly attracted to you. But without a magnet, you never notice all the forks and knives and keys and paper clips in the world. Being white in America is like living without a magnet, but being black is like wearing that magnet around your neck everyday.

Maybe Joe Wilson did us all a favor by reminding us -- and reminding white progressives -- that we don't live in a post-racial society. By Tuesday evening, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), an African American son of the south, had shamed the House into voting 240-179 to rebuke Rep. Wilson.

That Clyburn fellow is always playing the race card.