So will the Obamabots burn down their cities should their messiah lose the election?


Fatimah Ali: 'Race war' in America
By Fatimah Ali
Philadelphia Daily News

AT LEAST 2 million readers visit DrudgeReport.com daily, and, for the last two weeks, it seemed like most of them were steamed at me.
Thousands of hostile messages flooded my e-mail after my Sept. 2 column that the Daily News called "We Need Obama, Not 4 More Years of George Bush."

Drudge cleverly headlined it: "Philadelphia columnist warns if McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race war."

I stand by the column - but after all of that backlash, I realize I was dead wrong. We don't have to wait until after the election for a race war. We're in one now.

I know that putting the words "race" and "war" together is like hurling an incendiary device. But I wasn't issuing a call to arms, it was a metaphorical prediction.

I hate violence, but I do see a growing wave of intolerance sweeping the nation. And most of the responses were hostile, like one from someone who identified himself as Dennis Van Pelt: "Obama runs like a porch monkey in Alabama during a KKK concert." But, not all white Southerners feel like Dennis. Russ Nelson wrote: "I am a white male who was proud to cast my vote for Barack Obama in the Alabama state primary. He inspires me!"

Nelson sounds more like the liberal whites I grew up with in West Mount Airy, a community that pioneered integration in Philadelphia and kept me wearing rose-colored glasses. I didn't personally experience racism until I was 40, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

The recent onslaught of hate mail I received is a cruel reminder that racism is a like a simmering pot ready to boil over. But it's diametrically opposed to what democracy should represent.

I move in diverse circles and was raised in an upper-middle-class family with parents who exposed us to a wide range of experiences. My family includes several races and religions and a range of political views.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion...n_America.html