These folks believe that both the white race and “white culture” are at risk. They have shed blood to “save” them, and will undoubtedly do so again, especially if they get encouragement from right-wing establishment media figures like Glenn Beck.

If there is a debate here it’s whether Beck half-wittedly blurted out the phrase, thinking he meant that the president hated high-fivin’, beer bongs, Lawrence Welk, bingo parlors, casseroles and other stereotypical representations of the “white culture” — the same culture in which Obama was raised — or whether Beck used the phrase as a sub rosa show of solidarity with the American right’s violent racist base.

But there really is no debate. Beck’s refusal to say what “white culture” is makes it crystal clear what he meant.

We, the presumed free-thinking people of this country, continually present ourselves as though we have clear and authoritative views on race and what the current state of race relations actually is.

Let’s agree, here in this random shared web space, that we catastrophically DO NOT. We don’t have a shared understanding of this issue, and should employ our shared communications towards actually ASKING BETTER QUESTIONS, instead of dumping mounds of Information Noise onto the pile of existing broken dialog.

Otherwise, please apply your surplus keystrokes towards something less counterproductive. Take them out of the dialog that you actually are not contributing to. You…Do…Harm..by opening your mouths.

In a cursory web scan of dominant American news coverage, I was not able to find one instance of intelligent opposition to the terms “African American Community” “Black America” or a half dozen equally divisive and equally incomplete phrases. We are more comfortable with framing a “Black Culture” wherein we define an amoebic boundary set loosely along the borders of the civil right’s movement and almost exclusively within the scope of socio-economic and racial oppression and division. Within that boundary set, which we don’t mind considering separately from the broader American story, we don’t tend to be uncomfortable with the idea that the “black community”, for lack of useful vocabulary, has a somewhat defined differentiation between what is inside and outside of the African American experience. More simply, we are not upset if a Black representative alludes to a White America.

To admit this, simply accepts that race IS still an issue in America, which, in reading this article and the subsequent comments, is not a startling revelation.

Here is where I’m most concerned, and don’t mistake this position as a defense of Beck, whose stance is VERY poorly constructed and booby trapped against him. We don’t mind, not really, when a black representative speaks divisively even when it does not advance the dialog on American race issues. However, if a white man alludes to the notion that he is aware of an existing division in the American landscape, the blogosphere, main-stream media, and every dolt in America with web access will Burn…..Him….Alive.

Is Beck completely failed in his attempts to target this issue effectively? ABSOLUTELY! Is he a coward for recognizing that any discussion on race is not safe for a white man in America? No. We will end him on this issue and feel righteous in doing so, as though we are safeguarding equality.

rac·ism (noun)
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

Beck, Obama, and all of you are absolutely and consistently aware that there is a division amongst MANY peoples in America. This is NOT racism. It is fact. If we constantly pretend the contrary, actual racism continues in the backstreets of America with NO MEANINGFUL DIALOG.

A woman said to me recently “I’m not racist, but I wouldn’t go into a black neighborhood at night….you know, not because they are black, it’s just that the crime rates are so high, you know, people do what they have to do when they are poor.”

Now, instead of lynching, we quietly sift off into silent segregation and mutter about one another under our breaths, all the while congratulating ourselves on our own enlightened thinking.

No half-black presidents. None of that aggravating hippety-hoppity music playing where the white man can hear it — just Perry Como and Elvis. No uppity minorities demanding to eat at the same lunch counter as whitey (except there ARE no more lunch counters — they’ve all been converted into corporate-owned plasticfast-food franchises.)

“White culture” for Beckkk and his moran minions means “whatever the white man says, goes” and blacks/Mexicans/other minorities/women have nothing to say. Just like it was in the good old days of the 1920s, when white men could wear sheets over their heads and kkkarry guns as they walkkked in parades through Washington, D.C.

In fact, let’s spell the phrase like Beckkk means it: “White KKKultur.” (Linguistic nod to the 1930s Germans there — the real “white culture” Beckkk yearns for…)

There were only two candidates, one Republican and one Democrat. I really don’t think the math is that complex.