New York Governor: GOP is Race Baiting

As difficult as it was to watch the Republican National Convention, I did so under my "know what your enemy is up to" theory. Frankly, I was shocked - but not really surprised given today's GOP's anti-minority, anti-gay and anti-immigrant core message - when I heard the derisive comments about Barack Obama's past as a community organizer made by a number of speakers, including Christianist nutcase, Sarah Palin. Having lived in Alabama, Texas and Virginia, I recognized coded race baiting when I hear it. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who picked up on the racist nature of the comments. As Newsweek is reporting, New York Governor David Patterson has unloaded on this less than subtly coded message. Here are some highlights from Newsweek:

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(ALBANY, N.Y.) New York Gov. David Paterson said Tuesday that there were racial overtones in the Republican presidential ticket's criticism of Democrat Barack Obama's work as a community organizer. "There are overtones of potential racial coding in the campaign," Paterson said at an event in New York City.

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Paterson said that while Republican candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin haven't directly talked about race, it's strongly implied in comments Alaska Gov. Palin and others have made about Obama.

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"The Republican party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative," Paterson said. "But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican convention. A 'community organizer,' they kept saying it, they kept laughing, like what does this mean?