When Barack Obama speaks at the Democratic Convention on August 28, it will be the 45th anniversary of the day Martin Luther King told America that he ‘had a dream’ of a more equal country. King, of course, paid for his dream with an assassin’s bullet. The question now lurking behind every discussion of Obama’s campaign is: Will America elect a black man as its President? It is an uncomfortable question for a country with a particularly troubled history of race relations. Has America changed enough since King made that epoch-changing speech? Or will the electorate, or more terrifyingly, another assassin, block his path?
Obama received secret service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate in history, because of threats to his life. For almost a year, he has been protected 24 hours a day. Organisations which track white supremacist websites and communications reported a surge in activity as Obama’s candidacy took flight. A magazine in Macon, Georgia, recently printed a cover showing Obama in the crosshairs of a rifle sight. The accompanying article quoted one white supremacist saying ’some idiot out there’s going to put a bullet in that silver-tongued devil and then there’ll be a race war. ‘There are some in our movement who are preparing for a war, praying for it.’ More
Tags: Racism, threat, assassination, Obama, news, politics
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