What Digby Said...

...because Digby nails it (and you really, really need to see his maps).

There are strong forces at work that rival economics in people's minds --- tribalism, religion, culture, and tradition all have strong pulls on the human psyche. We are complicated creatures. And the complicated creatures who call ourselves Americans have an issue with race. It's been there from the beginning of this republic and it affects our political system in profound ways.

In the modern era, the Republicans party has developed a patented technique for exploiting it. It's been in disuse for the last few years --- war superseded their need for it. But, they only have to pull it out of the package, wipe off the filth from the last time they used it and put it back in action.

The good news is that each time they use it; it is less effective than before. Things are improving. Racism is not as immediate for younger people as it once was and the virulent strain is much less potent than it was when I was a kid. On race, this country takes two steps forward one and a half steps back. I'm hopeful that we can eradicate the systemic nature of this illness from our culture over time.

But we aren't there yet. It was only forty years ago that this country was still living under apartheid. Since then, overt public racism became socially unacceptable. That's huge and is the reason why, in my opinion,you see so much less of it among the young. But we've also seen the Republican Party very deftly develop an alternate language to appeal to those for whom this issue is still very salient --- and who talk about it among themselves. That language has helped to remake the map we see above. It's not a coincidence that the lines that divided the slave, free and "open to slavery" states are the lines that form the political divide today.

In the right wing litany of family values, small government, low taxes, god and guns the missing word is racism. They don't have to say it. It's part of all those things.

These last two weeks I've heard the old school racists dragging out the "n" word, but they are dying out. We aren't going to see a lot of that anymore, thank god. But the code words were being slung around more freely than I've seen in ages. The first thing I heard out of people's mouths was that these people had been "irresponsible" for not following the directions they were given. The next thing I heard was that "looters" were taking over the city and they should be shot. Then there was the "why do they have so many kids" and "why can't they clean up after themselves" and "defecating where they stood."

As Colin Powell said, the failure to evacuate the poorest part of the community from New Orleans wasn't motivated by racism, it was purely economic:

When you look at those who weren't able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own.

"These are people who don't have credit cards; only one in 10 families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor,"

BUT...there are more than a few on the Right (and even a few ostensibly on the Left) who would like it all to be about racism and will use the tried and tested codes as they attempt to make it so. I am one of those who will make it my job to point the finger and shout "racist" when they do.