Racism is worse?

Racism is worse? Originally published September 30, 2011 The Frederick News-Post By Steven R. Berryman

Actor Morgan Freeman asserted that racism is worse in America now that Barack Obama is president. The quote comes from's Piers Morgan's CNN comment last Friday. Freeman, the beloved star of "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Driving Miss Daisy" is well-respected, but is he playing God again? His comment made headlines for days on the Drudge Report and YouTube, but why do we rely on the Hollywood crowd for our political sway and enlightenment on human affairs? Well, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger aside. Freeman had nothing to back up his point, but went straight into digging at the tea party for "doing whatever it takes to get Obama out of office." Last time I looked, the tea party movement was a diverse, open group of loosely affiliated citizens who are marching to the drum of less spending, smaller government, state sovereignty and returning power to the people. I believe that even Martin Luther King would applaud that level of activism. The tea party was founded as a grass-roots movement uniformly against rising taxation levels, polarized by the reckless Obamacare plan shoveled at the American people. Minorities were fully represented, despite clever camera work by a biased media. Then followed the invented spitting incident, and branding the group terrorists. Sorry. It's not so easy to derail a real people's movement. But, back to racism as defined as the focus on a particular racial or minority group, I think that this administration has some explaining to do. The Washington Post reported Sunday in an above-the-fold article that the desperation in the continuing Obama presidential campaign is forcing a power play to get black, Hispanic, Asian and other minority votes as a centerpiece of their strategy: "The program, called Operation Vote, underscores how the tide has turned for Obama, whose 2008 brand was built on calls to unite 'red and blue America.' Then, he presented himself as a politician who could transcend traditional partisan divisions, andmany white centrists were drawn to the coalition that helped elect the country's first black president." So is it possible that the Obama campaign is already resorting to playing the race card this early in election 2012? Considering that the man cannot run on his record, I believe this to be the case. Remembering back to campaign 2008, the forces at play included a pervasive "anybody but Bush" attitude, combined with the thrill of having America's first black -- or minority -- president elected. Since then, black unemployment and national poverty levels have skyrocketed under the Obama presidency. The upcoming election will be about competence in leadership. If a focus on race has returned, it's by choice. An angry population is easier to motivate and control. But in what was hailed as a "post-racial" world, are we now more likely to wrongly use race as a weapon of divisiveness? Racism in America, per se, is not worse; it's just been dragged back out of the closet for partisan purposes. -- Steven R. Berryman writes from Frederick. srbmgr@comcast.net [original content is on http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/opinion/display_columnist.htm?StoryID=126626]

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