The elephant in the room.

We don’t like to talk about race in America — not anymore, not publicly. We like to think we’re past that. Unfortunately, we all know we’re not.

I have many misgivings and reservations about Barack Obama. There are a lot of reasons I think he might not be the president I’d hope to have in the White House. His race isn’t one of them.

Race — or more precisely, racism — is still a problem in America, though, and while the talking heads on television have commented on the problem extensively, they’ve danced all around it. That’s what’s (not so) hidden beneath all the talk about “working class whites” who supported Hillary Clinton but won’t support Barack Obama. “Working class whites” is the new euphemism for racists, I guess. I find it insulting, in that it seems to convey the idea that only (a) working class people and (b) white people are racist, which everybody knows is not true. I’m waiting for one of the talking heads to just say it: Obama won’t get the white racist vote.

Obama will lose a lot of the racist vote, for sure. I think there are a lot of people out there who would prefer not to have a black president, but will still vote for Obama because they’d hate having a Republican president, or John McCain specifically, even more, but even so, there are still a lot of white people who just won’t be able to bring themselves to vote for a black man.

That might be hard to believe, if you live in Oregon or Manhattan or Boston, but it’s true. Racism is alive and well in America, and not just in the Deep South. In the Midwest, in the Plains states, and even in New York City, racism still thrives. There are millions of white people who just won’t vote for a black man for president. Some of them might vote for a black mayor, or a black congressman, but a black president? That’s going too far.

It puts Barack in a tricky situation. On the one hand, he’s not going to win this race if he doesn’t get aggressive, and soon. On the other hand, an aggressive black man pushes all kinds of racist buttons in white America. The very fact that a black man still has to think about things like that is an indication of just how pervasive racism still is in this country, but there it is.

I don’t know how the campaign will handle it, but I know how I’d handle it: I’d go aggressive, fast. I’d go after McCain tooth and nail. I’d be vicious and merciless. That’s what the Republicans do, and that’s a big part of how and why they win. They don’t set out to persuade the electorate in a reasoned discussion; they go all out to destroy their opponents. I’m sorry that’s the reality of politics in America today, but it is. We all know it. That kind of campaign runs the risk of alienating even more of the white people who aren’t comfortable with black people, but I think it’s a risk the campaign has to take.

What the Obama campaign decides to do, and how that works out, is something we’ll all know in another two and a half months. We’ll see.

Something personal provoked this post.

Look, I understand racism. I was brought up on it. I’m from the Florida panhandle, which is much more like Dothan or Birmingham than it is like Miami. In Pensacola, even the Navy people — not exactly a bastion of liberal tolerance themselves — talk about how backward the locals are. My mother’s a hillbilly; some of my relatives on that side of the family were in their forties before they ever met a black person, and some of them don’t know any black people socially to this day. My father’s side of the family is no different. He’s from a Midwestern city that was lily-white and unabashedly racist when he lived there. He’s often told me that the rule for black people used to be, don’t get caught in Sheboygan after dark.

Things have changed — in the Midwest, in Appalachia, and in the Deep South. The attitudes that were prevalent among white people in the 1950s and 1960s are much less prevalent than they used to be. But things haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think. There are still a lot of people of my parents’ generation, and of my generation, and — saddest of all — of the generation after me who aren’t too far removed from Lester Maddox in their racial attitudes. They just watch what they say a little more, and who they say it around.

And I understand these people. Hell, I grew up among them. They are, like it or not, my people.

I was lucky, in a way, to have a grandfather who was virulently prejudiced against anybody who wasn’t Irish, who ranted and railed against the Krauts and the Polacks and the Spics and the Nips and the Woodenshoes and the Wops and the Frogs and the Limeys and, yes, the Niggers, on a daily basis. It helped me to see that prejudice against African-Americans was no different than all those other prejudices. It was stupid and it was rooted in fear and insecurity, as hate usually is. Racists, and bigots of all kinds, are really just cowards down in their dark little hearts.

The fact that my grandmother’s family was German helped me see the stupidity of it. The Krauts Grandpa railed against were, more often than not, his in-laws — my relatives; even, by extension, me.

“I’m sick of these goddamned Krauts comin’ in an’ outa my house all the time,” he’d say. “I never woulda married a goddamned Kraut if I’d known I was gonna have these goddamned Krauts in an’ outa my house for the rest of my life.”

As you can imagine, the in-laws weren’t exactly eager to visit, anyway. But that’s the kind of bullshit I heard growing up, and when you grow up that way, you realize pretty early on just how stupid it is. I mean, he was talking about my Great-Grandma. It didn’t take a lot of brains to figure out that his other prejudices, and the prejudices of the other people I knew, were just as stupid. Like Fred Phelps, my grandfather did his bit for tolerance, however inadvertently, by making it absolutely clear what bigotry really was.

But racism is insidious; it’s easy to let it worm its way into you. The weak smile when somebody tells a racist joke, the excuses you make for your racist friends and relatives — “He grew up that way;” “She doesn’t know any better.” That’s not their racism; it’s mine. It’s me not caring enough, not being honest enough, to tell the truth. Being willing to settle for racism is racist.

I’d even wonder whether my impatience with black Republicans wasn’t racist — I figure if you’re black in America, you ought to know better than to be a Republican — if I didn’t feel the same about gay Republicans. I’m definitely not homophobic.

But you know what? It’s enough. Yeah, racists grew up that way. We all grew up that way in America, or most of us did. Get over it. You can’t blame your parents and your grandparents forever. Somewhere along the line, if you have any morals, any decency, any brains, you have to start thinking for yourself. You have to start taking responsibility for your own attitudes and your own actions. We have the right to expect better than racism from the people we know — especially ourselves. We have a moral duty to stop making excuses for them, and for ourselves. Giving racism a free pass, just because you’re used to it, is racist.

It’s not good enough, either, to say that when another generation or two dies off, racism or homophobia or sexism won’t be as bad as now. Nobody should have to wait for that. Nobody should have to think that every time a grandparent dies, we all get a little more free. That kind of complacency, that resignation, is morally repulsive. It’s repulsive in rationalists who know that all living things are related. It’s repulsive in Christians whose holy book tells them explicitly that all people are members of one family. No matter who you are or where you come from, you really do know better. You know you do.

So, the bad news: I learned today that my mother’s eldest sister, a woman who has voted Democratic as long as I can remember, has decided that she just can’t vote for “a black.” It’s a great personal disappointment to me that somebody I love and respect has decided to let racism win over her better judgment. I’m not taking it very well. At the same time, I’m tempted to make excuses for her — to you, and to myself — to explain why she’s that way, and why it doesn’t make her a bad person. But I won’t. Enough is enough. No more excuses.

The good news: Her children are voting for Obama.