From Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 36:

"A critical aspect of the aversive racism framework is the conflict between whites’ denial of personal prejudice and underlying unconscious negative feelings toward and beliefs about blacks. Because of current cultural values, most whites have strong convictions concerning fairness, justice, and racial equality. However, because of a range of normal cognitive, motivational, and sociocultural process that promote intergroup biases, most whites also develop some negative feelings toward or beliefs about blacks, most of which they are unaware of or try to dissociate from their non-prejudiced self-images. These negative feelings that aversive racists have toward blacks do not reflect open hostility or hatred. Instead, aversive racists’ reactions may involve discomfort, uneasiness, disgust, and sometimes fear. That is, they find blacks “aversive,” whle at the same time any suggestion that they might be prejudiced “aversive” as well. Thus, aversive racism may involve more positive reactions to whites than to blacks, reflecting a pro-in-group rather than an anti-out-group orientation, thereby avoiding the stigma of overt bigotry and protecting a nonprejudiced self-image."

In other words, it explains why outlandish theories that would have no chance of sticking to a white president are able to gain traction against a black president.

that's the difficulty with symbolic (or modern) racism. it derives from deeply-seated beliefs that may even be unconscious. it takes a ton of self-awareness to be able to recognize these feelings. the hallmark of symbolic racism is pretextual discrimination. as in, they don't dislike obama because he's black, they dislike him because he's a fascist socialist muslim.

i was listening to the bbc last night, which provided an interesting perspective. the commenter was saying that health care reform and government spending are typical political issues that are and forever will be debated in every developed country in the world, but the vehemence and vigilance and rage-infused passion with which many on the right oppose obama signals that something else is at work. in other words, merely being opposed to big government and health care reform is not nearly all these people are upset about. if it's not racism, what is it?

if we could just focus on clearly explaining why the paranoid opposition to health care reform is based on lies and misinformation planted in the public perception by the interests who stand to lose the most if reform passes, we might get somewhere.

on the other hand, making the perfectly valid point that subtle or unconscious racism plays a significant role in the opposition to anything obama says or does is totally counterproductive. you have to know your audience and know what's going to persuade them, and it should be fairly obvious that the best way to elicit counteraccusations and get the opposition to dig in its heels even deeper is to accuse them of racism.

yes, it's true. the overwhelming majority of people who allow obama's race to color their feelings toward him don't realize it because it's on an unconscious level, and it takes an extraordinary amount of self-actualization to even begin to acknowledge you're doing it. you think people who really believe in "death panels" and think glenn beck and sarah palin are outstanding leaders are capable of being so honest and introspective? please.