The Cracker Barrel

A reader writes:

"If (Clinton's "bitter" strategy) works, it will just be more evidence of the unsettling plantation mentality of the mainstream Democratic Party...

...'We gonna take care of you and give you more programs and entitlements and empowerments and don't that make you feel good!'

Then quietly slipping away, down to the general store, sitting by the cracker barrel: 'You know, we do take care of them. And we do think they are coming along just fine. But do you think the rest of the country feels that way? I dunno. Better be careful. Don't want to step over the edge here.'

...I grew up in a world of paternalistic racism and separation. Open and aboveboard. I still know people whose attitudes haven't changed from those days. They accept the circumstances of surface equality, even if they probably don't believe it. But they're honest. It's worse when racism is more subtle, insidious, practiced with skill, and equally demeaning."

I recently asked a friend of mine who works in the Bronx as a social worker what it would be like for the women she works for, and their children, to see Barack Obama elected. She just kind of stared at me and bared a faint smile.