Chauncey DeVega on Ring of Fire Radio: If Mitt Romney Can Smear Barack Obama This Way, What do Rank and File White Conservatives Think of "Regular" Black People?

Here is the recording of my interview today with Mike Papantonio and Ring of Fire Radio. I liked my tone during the interview and felt that we covered a good amount of territory. I was a bit more personal and direct than is my habit. As I said there, the personal is political for black folks and our relationship with Barack Obama.

Although many of us are unwilling to admit as much in public, the hate campaign by Mitt Romney and the Tea Party GOP against the country's first black President is predicated on the Right's deep disdain for African-Americans and our citizenship. More generally, for the White Right, people of color are not, have never been, and are incapable of being "real Americans."

I was obligated to speak on such matters in a plain and direct voice where I "turned the volume down a bit" in order to help folks hear me better.

Romney's lead among white voters, and white independents in particular, is a clear testimony to this backlash. Perceived as real, when it is a fiction in so many ways, Obama's victory was understood by many to be a "win" for black folks. Romney is gambling that there are enough racially resentful white people to return the country to its status quo ante, where a white man is "naturally" and unequestionably in charge.

In a few days, we will find out if Romney's concerted campaign to gin up white racial resentment and rage against Obama (and by implication, people of color in mass) will have born fruit.