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Can anyone with common sense and fairness doubt that if Sara Palin or George W. Bush were black, they would have been pilloried and forced from the political arena within a day or two of their first public statements?

Palin recently was parodied on Saturday Night Live for a second time by Tina Fey. One of the most hysterical statements of the "Tina Fey Palin" was an actual answer Palin gave in her now infamous interview with Katie Couric. It was so incoherent that viewers thought that it was part of the comic script.

A key subtext to the presidential elections since Nixon have been the Republicans corraling much of the white vote through demagoguery. The effort of appealing to white "tribalism" has paid off with the economic pickpocketing of the white middle class (along with minorities)-- and the diminution in the quality of white Republican candidates to the point that Bush was the ultimate white affirmative action symbol of mediocrity. Ironically, the less skilled and knowledgable Republican candidates have become, the more they represent the right of the last stand of the "white power" cult to assert that a dumb white person is more entitled to run America than a savvy, knowledgeable minority. This is the ultimate -- and self-destructive -- assertion of white privilege and feeling of entitlement.

It's the ultimate deleterious impact of racism, leading to a form of national self-immolation. Stupid is as stupid does, and racism's stupidity (despite its strong emotional tug of tribal identity and feelings of superiority) has descended into the pit of Bush/Cheney rule and a McCain/Palin possibility. If any of the four were black, they would have been stalked, mocked and hounded from the political arena by the national corporate media (although Cheney would have been dismissed for his evilness; McCain for his erratic, reckless, non-sensical behavior; and Bush and Palin for their profound ignorance and limited intelligence.)

That brings us to Tim Wise's classic book, "White Like Me, Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son." Recently, BuzzFlash ran an op-ed by Wise that was one of our most popular pieces this election season: White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election.

Read the commentary and you won't be able to resist reading his hard-hitting, thought provoking book on the poison of racism, overt and subconscious -- and the personal responsibility we have to stand up and speak out against affirmative action for mediocre, uninformed white candidates, and against racism in general.

If George W. Bush or Sarah Palin were black, Rush Limbaugh would have crushed them into dust by now, as would Hannity, as would Ann Coulter, as would Bill O'Reilly.

It's the white double standard, and it is a cancer upon our society, because it has self-cannibalized the white working class and led to the usurpation of the rule of law under Bush and Cheney.

McCain and Palin would have never made it beyond the starting gate if they were black.

Out nation's greatness, sense of justice, and economic well-being are imperiled as a result, because racism is just a fire stoked by the GOP to loot 95% of us to make the rich, richer.

That's the legacy of the lure of racism.

We will soon be offering another book by Wise, "Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male."

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