Colin Powell is not just an African American

Good point, isn't it? I see this all the time, too. Most white people here in Nebraska just assume a racial basis to everything,... but only when it comes to minorities.

There were comments, even before the 2008 election, that Barack Obama would favor "his people." Who are "his people"? Americans? I would certainly hope that he'd favor Americans, as President of the United States.

But, of course, they didn't mean that, did they? Note that Obama's mother was white, and he was raised by his white grandparents. But that didn't matter, either. To these people - and many of them weren't intentionally racist - "his people" meant black people.

None of them would ever say something like that about a white president. It wouldn't even occur to them. Likewise, they wouldn't assume that a white person who backed a white candidate would be doing so automatically, just because they were the same race.

True, there probably were black people who backed Barack Obama because he was black, just as there were white people who backed Mitt Romney because he was white. But you'd only assume that with black voters, wouldn't you? Even though African Americans have overwhelmingly voted Democratic since the Republicans started deliberately wooing white racists with their 'Southern strategy'?

Obviously, there is a link with race in that,... but it's hardly unreasonable, I'd think. And it's certainly not what Bill O'Reilly and other white conservatives have been implying - or what many white people just implicitly assume.

That's a racist assumption. Let's be absolutely clear about that. This is racism. It might not be deliberate racism, but it's still racist.