I also think racism doesn’t have to be “out there” for people to hold certain feelings. They can be buried under the surface. It comes from growing up with prejudice around them and never being corrected by the family, or flat out IN the family itself. It gets ingrained at some level. Then something like Obama’s birth certificate comes along and it kinda pushes them over the racist edge.

Like the neighbor, whom I knew for a number of years, mentioned one day that she “sure Jew’d em down at the flea market.” She knew I’m Jewish.

Or recently a local Councilwoman in Miami got in serious hot water when she was chatting by the water cooler with some co-workers (a few Black) about how she sat in the N*r bleed section at the basketball stadium. Something like that. Anyway, she dropped the N bomb in front of African Americans without batting an eye.

It’s frightening to me that such prejudices get so ingrained, they become part of people’s natural vernacular to the point of their own ignorance.