ATLANTA — Hank Johnson, a black Democratic congressman from Georgia, owes an apology to his colleague Joe Wilson.
According to Johnson, Wilson's infamous cry of "You lie!" during President Obama's health care speech was rooted in racism and encourages racism.
"If I was a betting man, I'd say it instigated more racist sentiment, feeling that it's OK, that you don't have to bury it down," Johnson said. "I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people. That's the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked."
No, it's not logical at all, and it's completely unfair to Wilson. The same is true of remarks by former President Jimmy Carter, who also suggested that Wilson's outburst betrayed his racism.
Crying "racism" is a rhetorical nuclear bomb; it should never be used lightly or without strong proof, because it can destroy a reputation and demean the importance of real, demonstrable racism. Nothing Wilson said or did justifies such a charge.
Opposition, even intense opposition, to Obama's health care plan is by no means evidence of racism. Nor is attendance at various anti-Obama rallies, such as the Tea Party affair in Washington last weekend. Obama is trying to do big things, and big things need to be questioned and challenged. We have to have room for that in our national life, and unfounded accusations of racism can shut down debate.
And let's not fool ourselves. Real racism abounds. Fox News star Glenn Beck, the inspiration behind some of the more intense anti-Obama sentiment, recently claimed the president "has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture."
That deserves the nuclear bomb: it's racism, and any movement that still looks to Beck for leadership, and any network that still employs him, opens itself to questions about its values.
Mark Williams, another leader of the Tea Party movement, went on national TV this week and repeated previous statements that Obama is our nation's "racist in chief" and an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug."
"Welfare thug"?
It's been said that in the infinity of time, there is no sentence that has never been written or uttered, but I'm going to guess that in all the long history of the American republic and the English language, no previous president has ever been described using those two code words.
Then there's this week's coverage of a school bus fight in St. Louis. It was a simple case of bullying among high school boys, something that no doubt happened dozens of times that very day on school buses or in schoolyards around the country. In the St. Louis case, as in most instances, it had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that high school can be closer to "Lord of the Flies" than most adults care to remember.
But in this case the kid getting picked on was white and the attacker was black, and there was video. So for most of the day, the largest, most blaring headline at the conservative Drudge Report Web site read "WHITE STUDENT BEATEN ON SCHOOL BUS; CROWD CHEERS."
Why? The only possible purpose for giving that story such play was to validate and excite feelings of white resentment. Rush Limbaugh also rushed to push that story, offering it as a metaphor for what he called "Obama's America," in which the poor downtrodden white male is victimized by the black man.
These guys know their market. They are also racists. They're producing and selling racial resentment because too many people are buying it. In fact, using what you might call the Iceberg Theory, what these men feel free to say in public reflects a much larger and deeper sentiment that otherwise remains hidden.
So Carter, Johnson and others are right about this much: We're witnessing a conscious effort to stir up white anger and resentment at black Americans in general and Barack Obama in particular. It is an effort to remind white America that Obama cannot really be your president because, well, look at him. He's one of Them, not one of Us.
As a white male myself, I'm a bit embarrassed. People who look like me dominate Fortune 500 companies and elected political offices. We control an overwhelming proportion of national wealth. Yet somehow we are the downtrodden and powerless?
Guys, if you're not getting what you think you deserve and have earned, it's not because the black man is keeping you down.
Jay Bookman writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: jbookman(at)ajc.com.