From the AP:

Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain’s purpose so well. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.

If pointing out that Obama was “palling around” with an unsavory white man is a secret appeal to racism, then what isn’t? Because of Obama’s tendency to hide behind his race, or promote himself using his race, he has encouraged this sort of thing.

Ask yourself this: Which campaign has an interest in racial politics at this point? To the extent there are people in America who are going to vote against a candidate because of his race, they’re probably not in the undecided column at this point. But there are a lot of people in the undecided column who would be extremely turned off if they thought one campaign was using racial tactics. Since there’s zero chance that the media would call out Obama even if he made explicit appeals to race (he has come close on several occasions, and it took the McCain campaign, not the media, to call him out on it), only Obama benefits from talk of race at this point.

So watch for the media to turn this campaign to a conversation about race. Neither they nor the Obama campaign have the slightest compunction about tearing apart old wounds if it helps their candidate.

Posted by Apollo in Journalism, Race, Audacity of Hype