"Hang that darky from a tree"

This is not the first diary about today's Post story chronicling the abject racism and hatred encountered by Obama staffers and volunteers, and I hope to God it will not be the last.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

"Dispiriting?"

No.

Do not be dispirited.  There is no time.

If you support Barack Obama, as I do, then you simply have to summon your courage.  

There will be times between now and November 4th where you will feel helpless.

You will wonder whether your effort is futile.  

You will be confronted with seemingly infinite permutations of this narrative -- "Is America ready for a black president?" -- all of which seem contrived to make you doubt it yourself.  There will be times, faced with ugliness beyond compare, when you will want to quit.  

You cannot.

You will need to lift your head, stand up, and keep fighting.

To help you do that there are things you must understand.

You must understand that this question -- "is America ready for a black president" -- will be answered definitively on November 4th.  Until that hour, nobody can know the answer, and it's your responsibility to find peace with that.  Find peace in the fact that you are ready, and that you're doing what you can to make a new reality.

You must understand that the ugliness that dispirits you appears ugly because it is decaying and dying.  Contemporary racism in this country hides in cold, dark places.  It creeps from wet rock to wet rock, too ashamed of its own hideous appearance to show itself in the light of day.  It is aware of its own mortality.  It is its own mortality.

You must understand that no matter how many 527s line up behind Karl Rove to enlist the people who wish to see Barack Obama hanging from a tree, the vast majority of people who wish to see Barack Obama hanging from a tree are either too old or too lazy to bother voting.  Those with enough conviction to go out and vote are rotting from the soul out, and will not plague our society much longer.

Do not become dispirited.

Allow yourself to imagine eight years of peace, prosperity and brotherhood once again.

Allow yourself to imagine the feeling you will have when you awaken on November 5th.

Allow yourself to imagine a world in which no one will ever again ask the question, "Is America ready for a black president."

Do not become dispirited.

Yes, we can.

Yes, we can.

Yes, we can.