Black racism suddenly topic of debate

Is black racism a real problem? Or is it pure politics?

Shirley Sherrod's ouster from her Agriculture Department job brings to the fore a simmering debate over whether black racism is cause for concern in America under its first black president.

During the campaign, Barack Obama was forced to address the blistering racial remarks of his former pastor.

Since then, there have been complaints that Obama presides over an administration that is racial, not post-racial, when he supported a black Harvard professor who was arrested by a white police officer, or when the Justice Department dismissed most charges against a group of black militants accused of intimidating voters.

To some conservatives, there is something special about black racism. It is invisible in the liberal media, they say, and perpetrated by the Obama administration. While white racism is highly publicized, they say, black racism gets a pass.

Andrew Breitbart sees black racism as an issue. He's the conservative blogger who posted the clip from Sherrod's speech to an NAACP meeting that set off the contretemps. He said the NAACP, in accusing the tea party movement of racism, was glossing over its own bigotry.

In the video, he wrote, "Sherrod's racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another group's racial tolerance."

Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton University's Center for African American Studies, said some conservatives are manipulating white fears for political advantage.

"I think many white Americans are fearful that with Obama in the White House, and the diversity in his appointments, that the racial balance of power is shifting. And that's frightening both because people always are afraid to give up privilege, and because of the prospect of a black-and-brown backlash against a very ugly history," Perry said.

Some liberals long have maintained that racism requires power, and so black people can't be racist. Obama's election undercut the first argument and made the specter of black racism appear more threatening.

Joe Hicks was a black nationalist who demonized whites during the black-power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Now a conservative Republican and vice president of Community Advocates in Los Angeles, which works to improve race relations, Hicks said black racism is not widespread.

"The average black person doesn't dislike white people," he said.

But he does think it has become more prevalent than white racism. "Bigotry among white Americans has been driven to the margins of society. White people fear being called a racist more than anything else.

"But as white people have slowly moved away from viewing themselves in a racialized way, black people have maintained their sense of racial consciousness," which sometimes leads to bias, he said.