Today in racial panic

There's been a lot of talk recently about the racist response to Obama's presidency. To a large extent he doesn't have to do anything at all except to be black and president to generate this response. It's really something to see. Crazy, crazy stuff, scary as hell, but oh so revealing about the American spirit. I'm still hopeful that this stuff with end up killing the Republicans -- the Republicans of the Southern Strategy -- for a generation. Then again, I sometimes wonder how long it will be until we see white riots. The fear in the air is palpable, you can smell it.

Ta-Nehisi Coates once again nails what Obama is doing beyond simply being president while black:

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance. He tells kids to study--and they [the racist right] seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.

It's about time.