uppose that Barack Obama does not win  the 2008 presidential election.  Will there be a civil war?  Unfortunately, this is not just a hypothetical question.  And the reason why it is not is that there are sufficiently many who think that anyone who votes against Obama is racist.  And that line of thinking presents a real problem.  Indeed, this line of reasoning effectively puts John McCain in a no-win situation; for he cannot win squarely and fairly precisely because it has already been decided ahead of time that anyone who votes for him rather than Obama is racist; hence, McCain’s winning, and thus Obama’s losing, can only be attributed to racism. 

Unfortunately, this mindset is none other than a recipe for violence if indeed Obama should lose the 2008 presidential election.  This I shall demonstrate in the penultimate paragraph of this essay.

This mindset is also terribly flawed.  Consider, for instance, the presidential race between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000.  Many thought that the better man, namely Gore, lost.  Yet, since both men are white, it follows that the best person can lose the presidential election, and the explanation for that loss has nothing at all to do with racism.  Indeed, in every election it turns out that according to some citizens the best candidate, namely the one whom they deemed to be the better candidate, lost the election.   

Thus, at a matter of logic it hardly follows that if Obama loses to McCain, then the explanation for that loss is racism.  This, of course, is a purely logical point; and purely logical points do not tell us about actual probabilities.  As a purely logical point, it is possible that, if go back to the distant past, I am in some way related to both Obama and McCain.  However, the actual probability of this being the case rapidly approaches zero.

So one could concede the logical point and then contend that given the sort of country that America happens to be, it is very, very likely that if Obama loses to McCain, then the explanation for that loss is racism.

Now, one of the striking things is that it is supposed that if a black has an ounce of commonsense and self-respect, then the black supports Obama.  A recent comment by Larry Elder to a criticism of him is indicative of this line of thought.  And if one goes to the Huffington Post, one finds an article by Andy Ostray entitled "Why Obama Must Become President".  Ostray makes it clear that America’s history of past racism needs to be gotten over and voting for Obama is the way to do that.  Here is the first sentence of the last paragraph of his essay:

But if Obama loses to McCain in November, that will be an even greater statement of where America is with regard to race.

So, there you have it—and from a white guy, too—that if Obama loses to McCain, this can only mean that America’s race problem is still very much of a problem. 

Here is the problem with Ostray’s thinking: Since we know that between two white candidates, the better candidate need not win—and the explanation in that case cannot possibly be racism, then why does it follow that we have racism if the better candidate does not win and that candidate is black.  In other words, if people can vote irrationally in choosing the worse of two white candidates, why is it that these very same people are motivated by racism if they chose a white candidate who is worse than a black candidate?  Why racism rather than the usual forms of irrationality of which they are accused of exhibiting.

I understand that Ostray thinks that Obama is an obviously better candidate than McCain.  However, many thought the very same thing about Gore vis à vis Bush.  Indeed, the parallel is particularly apt, since many would say that in terms of desirability for the presidency Obama is to Gore what McCain is to Bush.  Moreover, it would be claimed by most that Obama is a much smarter man than McCain.  Many, however, would say the same of Gore with respect to Bush.

Even if we allow that in the end it was the U.S. Supreme Court that handed Bush the victory, what is true nonetheless is that insofar as Gore in fact won, he most certainly did not win by a substantial margin, let alone a landslide. 

Many of the things that made Gore unappealing to sufficiently many people also apply to Obama.  Thus, if one supposes that liberal reporters and academicians are not truly representative of America but the so-called silent majority is, then what follows rather straightforwardly is that with respect to certain core values Obama is no more appealing to that silent majority than Gore was—and for precisely the same reasons. 

In other words, I can without engaging in any form of intellectual gymnastics explain Oboma’s not winning without at all raising the spectre of racism. 

The issue for me is not whether racism continues to exist in the United States.  I assume that it does.  The issue, rather, pertains to its explanatory power.  And the best evidence seems to be that people are more indifferent to race than many black and white liberals allow.  Thus, I have not had the sense that white conservatives have been uneasy with either Condoleezza Rice or Colin Power.  There strongest critiques have been black and white liberals.  And none of these individuals have supposed that either Rice or Powell is dumb.  There is no reason at all to think that if Obama embodied the values of Powell that white conservatives would be opposed to him.

Not everything is about race even when it involves a black candidate.  The problem, however, is that far too many people are unwilling to see this in the case at hand.  To hear some tell it, Obama has no liabilities at all; and this is simply not the case.  Obama’s church affiliation for some two decades is a liability.  Such would surely be the case if a white candidate had belonged to a “whites only” club for two decades. 

The Trinity United Church of Christ was a veritable cesspool of venom against whites and the United States.  How is it not a liability to have been intimately affiliated with that sort of church for more than two decades?  One does not have to be a racist or an Uncle Tom to think that.  I stand amazed at whites who seem to deplore such behavior who nonetheless are willing to overlook it in Obama’s case. 

We are then approaching what might easily be one of the most explosive moments in American history since the Civil War.  The possibility of the Second Civil War does not strike me as out of the question.  For the unequivocal charge of racism should Obama lose is none other than a license to be publicly outraged; and the license to be publicly outraged is none other than a license to be violent.  So it was when Martin Luther King was assassinated; and the rhetoric of the present regarding Obama seems to be awfully akin to that moment.  If we should have such outrage, then what will surely unfold is the Second Civil War.  And the difference between the first and the second is that there will not be unity after the aftermath. 

Most disconcertingly, Barack Obama knows this.  Nay, he is counting on it. Insofar as no one can critize Obama without being called racist, then it is indeed true that America is not ready for a black president.  This lack of readiness, however, has much more to do with the mindset of liberals than it does with with the supposed intractable racism of conservatives.