Let's be clear about the effect of the racism directed against President Obama and his family

[yardwork]

3. I think that the blatant racism has been a surprise to many complacent white people.

I think that white people of a certain socioeconomic class wanted to believe that "we are past all that." The news articles and the images have been shocking to those who complacently, perhaps wishfully, wanted to believe that "nobody is racist anymore."

It's shown a very great divide between groups of people in the U.S. We see the casual way in which some elected officials - people who normally make some effort to hide their uglier behavior, if only from pure self-interest - forward racist emails and post vile "jokes" on their Facebook pages. This behavior is incomprehensible to many other people. But it's something that black Americans remain aware of all the time, can never forget.

As ugly as it is, perhaps it is a good thing that this racism has been exposed to the light. No more can anybody in the U.S. claim that we are "past all that."