I had a pretty big piece run today about how race might affect the election. That was the concept, anyway, as one of my editors envisioned it.
What I ended up doing was talking to a lot of people around York County about race, and how their feelings about it relate to the presidential election.
It's up to you readers to decide whether or not the resultant story was interesting. But I found some of the insights that county residents shared with me to be quite illuminating -- for better and for worse.
For one thing, I couldn't believe how many people out there are still saying they have reservations about Barack Obama because he's a Muslim. Need I even point out here that Barack Obama is not Muslim? And of course, I have to follow that observation with the obligatory, Jerry Seinfeld-esque disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Just about everyone who told me that also told me they're not racist, apparently unaware of the implicit irony in stating, in effect, "Hey, I'm not discriminating against him because of his race. I'm discriminating against him because of his religion. And that's OK."
Frankly, I have difficulty believing there's no element of racism in that perception. I chalk it up to a racial paranoia so deeply engrained in our society that we're hardly aware of it. Some people see a dark-skinned man with a non-anglophonic name and immediately perceive something inherently sinister.
When people would give me the Muslim line, then insist they're not racist, I would hear the echo of a college acquaintance who once told me, in all seriousness: "I'm not racist, but I'd go crazy if they gave me a black roommate."
Denial is more than a river in Egypt, folks.
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