By David K. Shipler
The alleged murderer Dylann Roof may have entered the bible
study group in Charleston from that fringe of white supremacists that have always
plagued America, but the stereotypes they hold of African-Americans are also woven
into much mainstream conservative commentary by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and
others. One telling overlap is their assertion that whites are in peril; Beck
has called Obama a racist who hates whites, Roof is said to have expressed
fears that blacks were taking over, threatening whites.
Ironically, the election of a black
president has enabled old racial assumptions to be embedded and camouflaged
within legitimate political criticism. The images are cleverly encrypted, but
they may be blatant as well. Google “Obama ape” and you will see dozens of
Photoshopped pictures of Michelle and Barack Obama as primates, playing off that
traditional American calumny of blacks as subhuman. You can buy them on
T-shirts and babies’ onesies. When they are circulated online, sometimes by
Republican office-holders, the caricatures create an odd counterpoint of racial
prejudice alongside the non-bigotry that most voters demonstrated by twice
electing the first African-American in the White House.
