Tim Wise, author of “White Like Me,” and well-known anti-racist activist and member Anti-Racist Action calls out the obvious gigantic elephant in the room about these over-the-top, hysterical reactions from the winger/teabagger/birther crowd that hates Barack Obama with such a passion that they can’t contain their racism as it oozes out of their sleazy pores with abandon.

CNN’s Don Lemon put him on and Wise didn’t hold back.

WISE: Well, you know, not everyone who opposes the president’s plan or him as an individual obviously is acting on the basis of racism. My argument is that there is a background noise of the hostility, that is, I think, about what I guess I would call white racial resentment.

Let me give you an example. We know in Missouri the other day, a white man goes, assaults a black woman, rips up her poster of Rosa Parks and then receives a huge ovation from literally hundreds of white folks in attendance for doing that. And then as they haul her away, the police in the room, the security, haul her away, these white folks are applauding. She was assaulted, a picture of Rosa Parks ripped up. Meanwhile, there are white folks in the room with posters that refer to the president by the “N” word. No one seemed to care about that.

Secondly, we’ve got right wing radio talk show hosts who for months now have been playing the white racial resentment card to get their forces revved up. You have Glenn Beck saying just the other day on two occasions that the health care bill is really not about health care, it’s Obama’s way to get reparations for black people.

Now, that’s absurd. What kind of reparations do you have to get sick first in order to get paid?

But when you say that and then you send these folks out there or Rush Limbaugh back at the end of May saying that Obama hates white people. Pat Buchanan saying that white men are, quote, “experiencing exactly what black people experienced during segregation” which is, of course, absurd. That kind of rhetoric underlying this opposition makes it very hard for me to think that race is not in the picture.


LEMON: OK. So then if we’re going to put blame on anyone’s shoulders, whose fault is it anyway? Is it — is it people just buying into the rhetoric? Or is it some of the people that you mentioned, some of the conservative talk show hosts there. Should they be more responsible with their language because people may be buying into what they’re saying and not realizing that it’s coded racism?

WISE: Well, words have consequences. And I think if you’re going to have a microphone and you’re going to speak to millions of listeners every day, you have a responsibility to, first of all, do your homework so you don’t tell lies about the health care bill and act like they’re going to kill grandma and then send Sarah Palin out there with a head full of nothing to tell lies to the American people.

And when you do that, don’t be surprised when folks show up at these events and are throwing around buzz words like socialism, fascism, comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler. See, that too, I think, is very telling. Because when you portray Obama as Hitler, as some of these folks at these rallies have done, what you’re saying, and this is very interesting, think about Hitler. We think of Hitler as not just a fascist, but a racial fascist.

So if what they’re saying is, this man, Obama, is a racial fascist, the question that gets begged in a lot of white people’s minds is, hmm, I wonder what race he’s going to come for. Oh, yes, us, because Glenn Beck said it’s reparations and Rush Limbaugh said Obama hates white people.

It gins up this type of hostility and really white racial paranoia and white racial resentment at a time when we need to be seriously talking about issues that face us as a nation and not being engaged in this kind of racial politics, but that’s what’s going on.

LEMON: And here’s the thing, and what I think many people don’t get is that just because you’re on the side of the camera that I’m on doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be objective.

WISE: Right.

LEMON: And I don’t mean — you know, and a lot of people are. But it’s a racket. It’s a gimmick for some people who are into it to make their names bigger or make money for themselves. And the people who are buying into this stuff may not exactly realize that in this process.

WISE: It’s a good point, Don. You know, there’s about 40 years of research, for example, which has found that whenever we talk in this country about social program spending for the have-nots or those who have less in our society…

LEMON: Like I had one guest last night, said that it was — said that it was health care welfare, which was an odd…

WISE: It is. It seems odd, but, see, that’s the problem. Whenever we talk about any type of social spending, whether it’s income support, housing support, nutrition support, or now health care support, there is a large percentage of white America, again according to 40 years of research, which hears black people. They hear Mexicans. They hear immigrants.

There is a perception, it’s often very wrong, but there is a perception that when we talk about government spending for the have- nots, we’re talking about taking from hard-working white people and giving to lazy black folks.

I would recommend that folks read Martin Gillen’s book from the mid-90s called “Why Americans Hate Welfare,” where he shows that the hostility to social program spending of any kind began in earnest in the early ’70s which was precisely the moment where the media representations of poor people switched from being mostly white folks during the Depression, Appalachian poor during the Dust Bowl, to being mostly black folks. There is a racial component to that.

LEMON: Tim, I’ve got to run here, but just real quickly. I was at a town hall yesterday and I really had to take some people to task. They’re very nice people, but they’re using those buzzwords that I don’t think people realize all the time like “real Americans” or “Give Me Back my America” was one of the songs or “Take Back America.” It’s like where has — I don’t — what do you mean by that?

WISE: Well, when you stand up and you wax nostalgic and say things like I want the country that the founders envisioned, when the country the founders envisioned was a formal system of white supremacy, excuse me if I found it a little hard to think that race is not perhaps playing a pretty big role.

Have you noticed the MSM has been slow to hold any of the Republican leadership accountable for this outrage? John McCain feebly tried to shut down the crazies at his town hall, but these people are rabid. I mean come on, when is someone going to ask Michele Bachmann or the rest of her birther caucus agrees with their fellow elected birthers that the President needs to disclose whether he’s circumsized or not — as some of their Base has called for.

Hat tip, Racialicious.