Open thread: The link between race and the healthcare protests

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

In this segment on CNN, Tim Wise connects the dots between the anger over healthcare reform and what he calls “white racial resentment.” Some of the points he cites as evidence of the link:

• The applause from white folks at a recent Missouri town hall meeting when a white man ripped up a black woman’s poster of Rosa Parks, and the black woman was then hauled out of the room.
• The right-wing pundits’ increasingly overt attempts to stoke racial resentment among white people, e.g. Glenn Beck’s assertion that Obama’s healthcare reform proposal is a way to get reparations for black people, or Rush Limbaugh’s claim that Obama hates white people.
• The comparisons between Obama and racial fascist Adolf Hitler. The implication seems to be that just as Hitler went after Jews (and other non-Aryans), Obama will persecute whites.
• Research indicating that many white Americans perceive any kind of government spending for have-nots to be taking resources from supposedly hard-working white people and giving them to supposedly lazy black folks.

Thoughts, readers?