Is Jimmy Carter a racist?

I've avoided this issue for long enough, so here goes.....

Jimmy Carter believes that Barack Obama's critics are racists. So does Janeane Garofalo. So does Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who believes, at minimum, that race is a motivator for those who oppose the President's agenda.

Let's move that accusation to the back burner for a few minutes, and move on to some definitions.

There are multiple forms of racism. The one that gets the most attention is the Ku Klux Klan / Aryan Nation / Han Chinese / We're God's Chosen People variety. This type of racist feels that certain races are inferior. I grew up with some of that in Mississippi.

There's another form. This is the racism of the paternalistic, quota-loving, tokenism sort. Race has to be taken into account on just about everything - hiring quotas, social promotion, the makeup of the homecoming court, construction contracts, etc etc etc. If the Big Daddy group doesn't set a lower standard for the lesser group, the lesser group won't ever make it on their own, a concept that the Bush administration once called "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

I don't like either variety of racism. I live on an oddball corner lot where "the neighbors" are, starting from the east, black, lesbian, gay, black, white, white, and Hispanic. I'm a long, long way from being colorblind, but that's not the point. When the Hispanic couple first moved in from Mexico, they had a less than charming habit of opening their garage door in the middle of the night, tuning 5 or 6 jam boxes to the same mariachi radio station, and turning the volume knobs up to eleven.

One of the Sapphic ladies, one of the black ladies and I didn't hesitate to walk across the street and ask them to turn down the volume, since East Fort Worth isn't Juarez. We didn't take cultural differences into account. We didn't research Mexico's tradition of having lots of friends over, shooting guns in the air, and cranking up the volume at 1:00 a.m. We didn't question whether they were capable of performing the action we requested. We acted like they were.... just.... like.... us. To do otherwise, IMAO, would've been racist. (Aw, honey, they're Mexicans. We can't expect them to behave like, you know, people.)

Enter Jimmy Carter, and the others who equate opposition to Obama with racism.

Barack Obama has added a projected two trillion dollars to the national debt. No one, I repeat, no one in Washington believes his statement that his healthcare plan will be "deficit-neutral". He has blatantly reneged on his pledge to post all proposed legislation on the internet before signing. It doesn't look like we'll be transferring terrorists out of Gitmo any time soon. Granted, Leader Of The Free World is a tough gig, but he got elected based on what he said he was going to do. He has made, and is making, pledges that he isn't going to keep. Those who voted for Obama based on his promises must be disappointed.

If you fail to express this disappointment, or protest against Obama's deceptions, is it because you suffer from "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? Remember how Republicans turned on the elder Bush when he violated his "Read my lips: No new taxes" pledge?

So here's a question for Jimmy Carter, Janeane Garofalo, and Mark Potok. Are you people racists?