America Is Facing Its Demon

It was thought that the election of Barack Obama was a historic event that would allow America to go forward, once and for all, and that the issue of race and the legacy of slavery would finally be behind this great nation. But the election of the “first black president” was just the opposite. “Instead of being a transformative experience,” laments a former correspondent for CNN at the White House, “his election has sparked a rash of racism, which in reality was just below the surface.”

Two recent events, among many others, are indicators of this unhealthy climate.

On July 12, authorities in Utah and the press were given a list of 1,300 names of residents of the state. At the top of each page were the words “illegal immigration.” In front of each name were the person’s address, phone number, date of birth and in the case of pregnant women, the estimated date of delivery. The document, signed by a committee called “Concerned Citizens of the United States,” asked the press to publish this list and the governor to make an immediate deportation of undocumented residents. In April 2010, the immigration authorities in Washington had received the list. The committee announced that other lists [will] follow.

The sponsors of the text explained that they had investigated those who were using schools, hospitals, utilities and public housing in the state while in the United States illegally. They said they were not a militia or a cult, but they will continue to investigate and make names public.

Apart from the fact that the publication of these names evokes other times in European history, the disclosure of health records is a felony, which is the most serious class of crimes in the United States.

Secondly, there is the “case,” or rather, the scandal, of Shirley Sherrod. The woman, an African American who witnessed the murder of her father by the KKK as a child in the state of Georgia, was victim of a “racially provocative” attack, as described by the New York Times. Andrew Breitbart has released a video of a truncated speech of Shirley Sherrod, where she seemed to confess her hatred of whites. Before the hoax was discovered, Sherrod was fired from her post at the Department of Agriculture, condemned by the White House and even the NAACP, the organization that protects the civil rights of blacks.

In fact, Shirley Sherrod was using her personal example — the assassination of her father by whites who have never been sued, losing her farm when the Georgia Department of Agriculture did not grant her loans that were granted to white farmers without discussion — to explain how she learned to forgive and help those very people who had inflicted such punishment.

These are just two examples among many others. We talked about Rush Limbaugh, who spoke of Obama as if he should have been a shoeshine boy in the streets. The demons of racism show their ugly face every day. “…We have been going backward [on the issue of race] since Election Day 2008,” laments Frank Rich, columnist of The New York Times. He might have added “at high speed.”