Jimmy Carter’s experiences as a peanut farmer and up-and-coming politician from southern Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s familiarized the former president with the racist views many White southerners had of African-Americans. Invoking those personal experiences last month, Carter said South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Barack Obama’s health care speech to Congress was rooted in racism. Carter’s remarks highlighted the role he believes racism plays in the intense criticism the Obama administration receives from opponents.
“There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president,” Carter told attendees at a town-hall public meeting at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
Like Carter, many Americans have grown alarmed with certain elements of the Obama opposition, such as the “birther” movement, whose adherents don’t believe the president is an American citizen; the so-called “tea party” protests; the protests at town-hall meetings and the onslaught of divisive statements from conservative talk show hosts and from Americans equating Obama to Hitler. With conservatives arguing that bringing up racism is an attempt to silence opposition to the president’s leadership, Carter’s foray into the racial discourse around Obama renewed scrutiny of the extreme elements and lack of civility that have characterized some of the public criticism the president has received.
“What I took President Carter to say, which I think ought to be unobjectionable, is that President Obama is being dealt with by some people in the American public differently because he is Black than he would if he were White,” says Dr. Russell Riley, chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs. “That doesn’t mean that everybody who has complaints about President Obama is motivated by racism.”
