I’m tired of talking about racism. In feminism. In politics. In literature. In the media. In my daily life. But you know what? I don’t get the luxury of ignoring that it exists. No one of color gets to pretend that their skin color doesn’t affect how they are perceived. So why exactly are we supposed to give Ferraro a free pass because she’s making a half-assed effort to pretend that her comments aren’t racist? Her “defense” that anyone that categorizes them as such is only doing so because she’s white is such a pile of crap it actually hurts my head.

Newsflash, if you’re a white person claiming that a black man only got where he did because of his skin color? That’s racism. Welcome to American Racial Interactions 101. Pick up a book or use Google to figure out why American history will influence the way in which such comments will be perceived by the public. The fact that she won’t stop saying it? Just hammers home the fact that she thinks her version of racism is acceptable. Bonus points for her appearing on Fox to say it again last night while trying to pretend she’s a victim.

While I’m absolutely not about to start calling myself a Republican, I think I’m done pretending the Democratic party is any better when it comes to dealing with the reality of race in America. Oh, they dress things up ever so pretty with lots of talk about helping the poor and the disenfranchised, but clearly if black people want to follow a leader that isn’t white all Hell will break loose. The crazy thing is that this might well set McCain up to garner more black votes in November since he’s come out and immediately repudiated derogatory comments from a supporter, while it took Hillary Clinton days to issue some sort of apology for the race baiting that has continued to spew out of her campaign.

Does that mean I think the Republican party is free of racism? No. I’m not delusional, I can still remember the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina. But, they’re not the ones running around claiming to be progressive, and their party’s core voters are not POC. It’s past time for the Democratic party to start living up to the claims of being anti-racist by being…anti-racist. That means no more “Oops, we did it again” moments followed by an expectation that black voters just forget the event. Own the mess, clean it up, and stop trying to deflect criticism with the pretense that it is worse to be called on racism than it is to be a racist.

Karnythia is a writer, a historian, and occasionally a loud mouth. In between raising hell and raising kids she usually manages to find time to contemplate the meaning of life as a black woman in America.” Her posts on any topic can be found at her Livejournal.