An MTSU sophomore, Danielle Ross, was quoted on MSNBC in an article on racism in the current political primary process. She too off from college to campaign for Barack Obama and was in Muncie, IN, working the people on street corners and at a Wal-Mart.

“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”

The article goes on to discuss other examples where name-calling was the most pleasant aspect.

Brendan Loy, however, doesn’t think that if West Virginia goes heavily for Clinton that racism is necessarily the reason for it. I agree with Brendan. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve wondered how reporters seem to find so many people to interview that sound so yokel and have more fingers than teeth.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, if you’re a reporter, and you conduct enough man-on-the-street interviews, you can find some idiot to say “Obama’s a Muslim” — or even “Obama’s a n***er” — anywhere. You can find racists and xenophobes and conspiratorial crazies in California, New York, Texas, Illinois; you can find ‘em all over the damn country.

Can you find them more easily in West Virginia? Perhaps. But you’re also much more likely to publish their quotes in a story about West Virginia, because it fits the storyline perfectly. Indeed, such a quote is precisely what these reporters are looking forwhen they start conducting the interviews in West Virginia. Whereas in California or New York, they’d probably ignore the random racist quote, in West Virginia they go out, they turn on the yokel-detecting radar, they hold up a microphone to the redneckiest-lookin’ redneck they can find, and — voila! — journalistic magic happens.

Sharon Cobb has a post that reminds me of a girlfriend-to-girlfriend “talking to” that you can hear on college campuses on Monday mornings across the country: “America, If You Let Barack Obama Slide Through Your Hands Because Of Some Bumps , Then You Don’t Deserve Him As Your President.” I doubt that Sharon’s post was directed at me (I’m a Republican, plus I’m already spoken for in the “messiah” department–just kidding, just kidding), but I guess I just “don’t deserve” Obama.

From a somewhat different perspective but in the same vein, Brendan Loy makes his rather earnest case for Obama and directs it toward Conservatives. As I explain here, I’m skeptical. (hat tip: Post Politics).

Vol Abroad is posting on the subject as well. She writes:

Barack Obama has denounced Rev. Wright’s words. He found them offensive. Well, good - I guess. But it struck me that what Obama really found offensive was that Wright wasn’t following the party line anymore, wasn’t giving Obama his due. After all, he’d heard 20 years of Wright’s challenging sermons - but only a few minutes of Wright’s criticisms of one Barack Obama.

(hat tip: No Silence Here) After apparently first believing that the Rev. Dr. Wright had diverged from past policy and theological positions in his most recent media marathon (read her whole post) it appears Vol Abroad is skeptical, too, even if through Hillary-tinted glasses.

Glen Dean has a mini (he didn’t include my post) round up of Tennessee discussions about Obama’s pre-presidential-campaign Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It may become known as Sen. Obama’s Brother Wright moment . . . or maybe his Reverend Wright Moment (ref. Sister Souljah) Time will tell.

But what I enjoyed most was this line about criticism a President McCain will face from within the GOP:

We’ll then see how much President McCain likes Republican “mavericks”. My guess is not so much. In fact, he’ll probably break something.

Glen Dean is discussing a post by Sean Braisted about the generational aspects to the issue of race. It’s an interesting discussion and I agree with Glen that we in America are making serious progress in the area of becoming less racially prejudiced. But Glen writes:

I have always believed that this country would never be able to put the race issue behind it until the Baby Boomer generation passed us by. Until Gen X and Gen Y Americans of all origins control the government and the media, race will always be an issue. For this country to begin to focus more on “content of character” than “color of skin”, the Baby Boomer generation will have to pass us by.

I agree that the passing of older generations will likely mean the passing of much racial prejudice, but I have a little different view. I believe that race-based policies and tolerating (by which I mean “failing publicly challenge it”) racial prejudice like that of Rev. Wright will only provide oxygen to the fire that is humans’ propensity to be prejudiced.

That’s why I think it is significant that Obama has–in my opinion, condoned racial prejudice from the pulpit of his home church. That’s why I think it is probably time to move on from race-based policies like Affirmative Action.

The whole Rev. Wright story has raised the issue of race in America, and I’ve said elsewhere that I think it is a worthwhile discussion to have. For the record, I think it is very relevant to consider the teachings/principles taught at the church where potential Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen to attend for 20 years. But based on some typically thoughtful and typically provocative comments by Gandolf Mantooth on this post, it occurred to me that the underlying issues of the Wright story are not actually being discussed.

Frankly, it concerns me that any significant (numerically-speaking) portion of the American public believes that the American government created AIDS. It concerns me that some have concluded that “three strikes” legislation is racially motivated. I think it is healthy for me to hear why some people believe this, and it is healthy for these ideas to be taken seriously, which means to me that they should be carefully analyzed and considered.

In all candor, I think that making any headway on the subject is unlikely because the American Left is too vested in their caricature of non Liberals and non Democrats as bigots and persons who oppose race-based policy based on malevolence. But we’ll see.