Embarrassing

"Two in 10 Democratic voters in Kentucky said race was a factor in their choice, and they overwhelmingly voted for Mrs. Clinton."

Read that again.

Link at the bottom for NYTimes article.
So we have evidence that close to 20% of Democratic voters in Kentucky are admitted racists. Admitted racists. And this is the Democratic party, the supposedly more liberal and progressive party. Let's assume for a second that KY Democrats are twice as accepting as Republicans (maybe that's not fair to Republicans but it's a round number). So we can then assume that 30% of Kentuckians are openly racist. But wait, there's more. About 8% of Kentucky's population is black, and can be safely assumed not to have voted for Clinton based solely on her race. Remove them, and we're talking about roughly one-third of Kentucky being openly racist. Surely there are enough racists there who are simply too shy or--one would hope, ashamed--to actually admit it to a reporter, so that probably half of the state is racist. Half the state is over 2 million people.

I grew up in Eastern Ohio in an area that fringed Appalachia and therefore had as much in common with Kentucky and West Virginia as it did with the rest of Ohio. My mother grew up in Northern Kentucky and met my father at a small college in Ohio near the Kentucky border. We used to travel to visit my grandparents in Wurtland, KY about once a year until I went to college. And still the above math shocks and disgusts me.
I don't have the article handy, but my memory tells me the percentages for West Virginia were strikingly similar. We are not dealing with an isolated phenomenon, or a glitch in the polling.

When I was younger I used to think the issue of racism was overblown, that in the 1990s it was just not as relevant as it used to be. I thought we as a nation had been through it all and had successfully turned a corner. Now I don't know. We've obviously turned some kind of a corner, but we just as obviously have further to go. Could it be that racism has breathed new life and is spreading? Have we in our haste to pat ourselves on the back for doing a good job in extending equal rights slacked off and therefore left the smoldering pit of racism too much room to sit and fester? Have we allowed it to occupy too large a corner of the demographic so that to others it might still appear legitimate?
Whatever it is, the current state of affairs in this country just isn't acceptable.
I guess this is why I try not to read too much political election news, because the results invariably anger/upset/disappoint/confuse me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/politics/21cnd-campaign.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin