Post Racial? Yeah, Sure.

This post was going to be about how despite being a fairly educated working stiff all my life, I have still only achieved one of six benchmarks that guarantee middle class status– a small modicum of health insurance (although in all honesty, I have afforded vacations- in the past). But I couldn’t help but notice the steady stream of ugly, blatantly racist remarks in the Comments section (link above).

These despicable comments were not the cleverly coded attacks and innuendos that say… FOX has mastered on an almost daily basis. In this “post racial” age, when outright racism is supposedly more subtle and code words the rule of the day, make no mistake that this manner of bigotry has not replaced the old- it is simply yet another branch that all too happily coexists with its less literate, albeit more honest ancestor. Many of these comments mirror the ol’ time, knee slappin’, down-and-dirty racist remarks that brought glee to white faces everywhere in the deepest South of yore.

I beeze in da uper class nows, baby. coz obama da man an he done tolds me i will be gittn mo money mo money mo money from him. and i aint gotta do nuttin coz da white man has done stole every thing from me and my peoples.

its bushes falt to and that dik chanie. thats what my peoples says and i be smart nuff to believe it.

i aint gonna have to pay nuttin and da crackers can pay me now. i be rich now.

Cute, huh? At first, many of the racist comments were directed at the fact that Yahoo Finance chose a photo of an African-American family to illustrate this generic Investing Ideas & Strategies article (link above).  Amazingly, some of the latter comments were addressing why that photo was then removed in favor of a… white family?!? And now it has- NO PHOTO at all!!!

— Stan Banos

(cross-posted from Reciprocity Failure. 8/29/2010)