On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher dispensed with the notion that having a black president means that racism is over in this country, asking if any of his white guests have ever been followed around in a department store or otherwise racially profiled.
In the wake of President Barack Obama’s remarks Friday on the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, many conservatives have accused to president of stoking the fires of racial unrest in the country because he spoke candidly about the fact that racism is still alive and well in the U.S..
“There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me,” Obama said. “And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.”
Many right-wing commentators insist again and again that there is no more racism in America if we have a black president and black attorney general.
On Friday, Maher said, “He’s just asking conservative to say ‘We admit there is a problem.’ Can we get that?”
Unless people are walking in Klan robes and burning crosses in the middle of the street, he said, conservatives are loath to admit that there is any evidence of racism anywhere.
He asked his white, conservative panelists, anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist and former Republican U.S. Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), “Have you ever been followed in a department store?”
(Source: HBO and RawStory.com)
