Is Sarah Palin a racist?

Everywhere she goes, Sarah Palin is stoking the fires of fear and racism, appealing to the lowest common denominator in her audience. Last week, for example, the mob turned on an African-American member of the media telling him to "Sit down, boy."

While not explicitly condoning such behavior at her rallies, Sarah Palin has done nothing to discourage this disgusting behavior. But racism on the campaign trail didn't just come from nowhere. When Sarah Palin became governor, she told a prominent member of the African-American community that she did not plan to hire any minorities for her staff.

Gwen Alexander, the president of the African-American Historical Society of Alaska, told me that Palin stated defiantly that she had no intention to hire any minority staffers. And according to Bishop Dave Thomas, senior pastor of Anchorage-based African-American church Jesus Holy Temple, the Palin administration excluded black business owners from the Alaskan oil and gas pipeline board. "We wasn't even able or allowed to go into the meetings" to seek contracts for the pipeline, Thomas told me.

Palin further alienated Alaska's black community by becoming the first Alaskan governor in recent memory to not recognize the Juneteenth celebration of the emancipation proclamation. "She doesn't hire any black people, she doesn't have any on her staff, so it's not a surprise that she doesn't support our Juneenth celebration," Alexander said. [emphasis mine]

But not hiring minorities isn't enough for Sarah Palin. Apparently, Governor Palin used a racial epithet to demean Barack Obama in public, and frequently uses them with regard to native Alaskans. And if you thought George Allen calling S.R. Sidarth "macaca" was bad, Sarah Palin looks like David Duke by comparison.

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

[...]

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article. [emphasis mine]

Regardless of what political party she represents (Republican, Alaskan Independence or otherwise), the racist venom spewed forth by Sarah Palin is unbecoming of a potential leader of the free world, and it's time for her to go back to Alaska and retreat from the national political scene.