This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 01, 2011 - For anyone who thinks the election of Barack Obama as president means the United States has moved into a period where race no longer matters, Julian Bond wants you to take a look at one word -- and just rearrange the letters.
"America," he told an audience at Washington University Friday, "means 'I am race.'"
"Those who say race is history have it backwards," Bond added. "History is race."
Bond, whose leadership in the civil rights movement goes from the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s to his recent chairmanship of the NAACP, said that as the nation marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, it must acknowledge that the racial issues it raised are far from settled.
"We are still a country at war with itself," he said, "but we are not the same country. We have gone from civil war to civil rights."
"Jim Crow may be dead," Bond added later in his talk, "but racism is alive and well."
In his admittedly partisan talk, he said one of the aims of his speech was to dispel the notion that the Obama election had removed all racial barriers in the United States. Noting the period before the Montgomery bus boycott and the 10 years after it that led to the Voting Rights Act, Bond said it was a time when he could not have eaten at many lunch counters, cast a ballot or even attended the University of Virginia - where he is a professor of history - much less have taught there.
"Those were not the good old days," Bond said.
And he added that many of the issues that characterized the period after the Civil War - states' rights, the scapegoating of racial minorities and immigrants for the nation's problems - have resurfaced with the rise in power of the Tea Party, which was a frequent target of his criticisms of conditions in the United States today.
"These birthers, who we used to know as Birchers, have more in common with Confederates than they do with patriots," Bond said.
"Today, the marginal has become the mainstream."
As far as their success at the polls, he said:
"They are people who proudly proclaim, 'I hate government, and now I'm in it."
Instead of caring about issues that will help Americans in need, Bond said, the Tea Party - and the Republican Party where it has established such a strong beachhead - has concentrated on self-interest. He cited the anti-union movement in Wisconsin and other states as an example.
"They came to office saying they were concerned about jobs," he said. "But the only jobs they seem to be concerned about are their own."
In that atmosphere, he said, Obama is often judged as being guilty of "governing while black," and his mere presence in the White House is enough to prompt fervid emotion.
"President Obama is to the Tea Party as the moon is to werewolves," Bond said.
"If Obama represents the end of the America they knew, I say good for him."
Bond had particular disdain for Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. Noting her recent gaffe where she said the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts, Bond said that the mistake may have been hers and may have been her staff's, but in either case it shows the level of knowledge that she and other Tea Party members have.
"It's the stupid leading the stupid," he said, "and that can't be good for the rest of us."
Bond urged his audience to work for the re-election of Obama, acknowledging that he is disappointed with some aspects of his administration so far but saying that he is the smartest president he can remember.
He ended by pointing out that by mid-century, 40 percent of the nation will be African-American or Hispanic, which means that the payments being made to fund the Social Security benefits for baby boomers will be made not by people with names like Carl, Bob or Steve but by workers named Tamika, Maria and Jose.
So everyone should make sure that they get the best possible education and suffer from the least possible discrimination.