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Editorial: Racism follows Obama on Twitter

 
Published May 25, 2015

President Barack Obama's 2008 election raised idealistic hopes that he might help all but erase America's racial divide. Vitriolic response to his new @POTUS Twitter account sadly reminds us that his time in the White House has accentuated political polarization in some corners of the nation.

A New York magazine article by Jonathan Chait last year made a persuasive case that people's views on health care, debt, unemployment and other critical issues are closely aligned with their perception of whether black Americans are getting a fair shake. Obama's skin color and policies aggravated what Chait called "primal grievances" surrounding race. Some of the president's supporters can be too quick to dismiss any political opposition to his policies as racist. His most outspoken opponents bristle at the notion that race has any effect on their opposition. Racial differences that contribute to our political dysfunction are so pervasive that one poll found that Obama voters were 39 percent more likely than Romney voters to say that the movie 12 Years a Slave deserved its 2014 Best Picture Oscar.

The president's new Twitter account brought out @POTUS nooses and racial slurs that were dwarfed by the overall positive response. But they are a sober reminder that this nation still has far to go on matters of race regardless of the skin color of the president, and that ugly prejudices that influence our national political dialogue should be exposed rather than ignored.