From appeals to "common" Anglo-Saxon culture, to race baiting over Welfare, to attempts at the "niggerization" of President Obama, the Racism of the Romney Campaign becomes ever more apparent. Yet Pearl clutching over the use of the "R word" persists among Democrats.
The racist underpinnings of Romney's and the GOP's assault on the Obama Presidency have become so blatant as to be obvious to anyone other than their paid shills, mindless partisans or covert White supremacists. Nevertheless, the merest mention of the R word is enough to spur fainting fits with some. They argue that it is wrong to accuse Romney of racism without indisputable evidence of his "personal" racism.
The disconnect here is between subjective and objective racism. There is racism as a subjective, individual opinion or attitude and there is racism as an objective institutional or social force.
A hermit on a hilltop could be a stone racist but who cares? A politician could be free of personal bias but cynically willing to manipulate the internalized racism of others. The former is regrettable but the latter is intolerable.
The problem with most discussion of racism in the US is that it becomes mired in the subjective case of racial animosity as a personal moral or intellectual failing, rather than the objective case where it devastates the lives of millions. We waste time and energy arguing about whether this or that individual is "personally" racist, as if this had some material effect on the racist actions or policies they promote.
An appropriate comparison would be with the "good German" of Nazi Germany. There were many Germans who were not personally anti-Semitic but supported the Nazi Government out of a sense of national loyalty. This hardly acquits them of moral complicity in the genocidal crimes of Nazism. If anything, they were more despicable than the Nazi true believer.
On the question of Romney, et al's personal racism, I couldn't care less. I don't care what's "in his heart." I'm neither a Priest nor a Preacher. What I care about is the objective impact of his actions and the policies he promotes. Those are clearly racist. A lack of personal racism would only increase, rather than lessen, his moral and intellectual depravity.