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Race Baiting

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New York Post

First it was Gov. Paterson. Now the dean of New York's congressional delegation has played the race card -- and just as the governor did, he's using President Obama to do it. Rep. Charles Rangel said Tuesday that "bias" and "prejudice" toward Obama are fueling opposition to health-care reform. Those incendiary comments came on the heels of Paterson's controversial comments about race that also mentioned the nation's first black president. "Some Americans have not gotten over the fact that Obama is president of the United States. They go to sleep wondering, 'How did this happen?' " Rangel (D-Manhattan) said Tuesday. Speaking at a health-care forum in Washington Heights, Rangel said that when critics complain that Obama is "trying to interfere" with their lives by pushing for health-care reform, "then you know there's just a misunderstanding, a bias, a prejudice, an emotional feeling."

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Huffington Post

"Whites are people too" is the title of a YouTube video making the rounds on the Internet. A lot of stuff is happening in the world of race relations and little of it points towards a post-racial society. Fox commentator Glenn Beck has been targeted by groups demanding his removal for having had the gall to call President Obama a racist who hates white people. Beck is steadily losing advertisers, but his viewers seem to be sticking with him. Undoubtedly, there are white Americans who agree with Beck and will cite as evidence Obama's long-term membership in Reverend Jeremiah Wright's ethnocentric Church, his Administration dropping charges against members of the New Black Panther Party suspected of intimidating white Philadelphia voters, and his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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ABC

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s supporters promised that his election would allow America to “transcend race." Among the headlines: The Boston Globe: "Obama shows an ability to transcend race” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Obama's success suggests we can transcend race” But of course that hasn’t happened. Jonah Goldberg writes: It was Obama’s supporters who hinted, teased, promised, and prophesied that Obama would help America “transcend race.” But now, it is they who shrink from their own promised land… From Day 1, Obama’s supporters have tirelessly cultivated the idea that anything inconvenient for the first black president just might be terribly, terribly racist. Goldberg has plenty of examples: For instance, actress Janeane Garofalo summed up the tea parties thusly: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

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