Is Ralph Nader “starting to talk white supremacist [sic]?” According to John Aravosis he is.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Nader noted that Obama has not addressed issues fundamental to African-Americans, namely the need to crack down on “economic exploitation in ghettos,” including “Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, [and] lead.” Nader, pointing out the obvious, says that Obama is attempting to assuage white fear by “talking white” and avoiding the stigma of being “another politically threatening African-American politician.” Nader goes on, “Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic.”

So let’s try and follow Aravosis’s logic here: a) Candidate A points out that Candidate B is avoiding discussion of issues pertaining to the oppression of blacks in America so as to assuage white voters. b) Pointing this out is tantamount to being a white supremacist, or “talking white supremacist,” therefore c) Candidate A is a white supremacist.

If we apply Aravosis’s logic elsewhere, we also must conclude that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are white supremacists, or “talking ‘white supremacist.’” After all, earlier this year Jackson accused Obama of “acting like he’s white,” and Sharpton criticized Obama for trying “to grandstand in front of white people.” Jackson also pointed out that he felt John Edwards was “the only candidate addressing African-American problems.” Now, I’ve heard Jackson and Sharpton called a lot of things, but I don’t recall “white supremacist” being among them, though if the premises of Aravosis’s argument are true, then it would seem that this would be the only appropriate conclusion.

(H/T Curt Meinhold)

What about actual white supremacists? Perhaps the term “white supremacist” sounds a bit quaint when applied to Neo-Nazi and former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke, who, interestingly, told The New Republic’s Michael Crowley that “white nationalists” like him “don’t see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton - or, for that matter, John McCain.”

Why would this be? After all, McCain publicly agreed with Bill O’Reilly’s call to maintain “the white, Christian, male power structure.” Crowley explains that this indifference on the part of Duke and other white nationalists “reflects the fact that, unlike Jesse Jackson, Obama simply lacks the certain cultural signifiers - not to mention an urban-centric policy agenda - that would viscerally threaten racist whites obsessed with maintaining white rights, ending affirmative action, and cutting off nearly all non-European immigration.” Obama himself noted in Audacity of Hope that “what ails working- and middle-class blacks is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts,” ignoring the affects of institutional and systemic racism.

So, following Aravosis’s logic, we must conclude that because David Duke doesn’t point out that Obama is attempting to assuage white voters, that Obama’s not different than Clinton or McCain in that regard, Duke is not talking “white supremacist,” but because Nader does point it out, he is? Try figuring that one out.

(Photo courtesy of Chattahbox)