Hypersensitive race codes?

David Shipler:

Whether by calculation or coincidence, Hillary Clinton and Republicans who have attacked Barack Obama for elitism have struck a chord in a long-standing symphony of racial codes. It is a rebuke that gets magnified by historic beliefs about what blacks are and what they have no right to be.

Clinton is no racist, and Obama has made some real missteps, including his remark last week that "bitter" small-town Americans facing economic hardship and government indifference "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." Perhaps he was being more sociological than political, and more sympathetic than condescending. But when his opponents branded him an elitist and an outsider, his race made it easier to drive a wedge between him and the white, rural voters he has courted. As an African American, he was supposedly looking down from a place he didn't belong and looking in from a distance he could not cross.

This could not happen as dramatically were it not for embedded racial attitudes. "Elitist" is another word for "arrogant," which is another word for "uppity," that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.

At the bottom of the American psyche, race is still about power, and blacks who move up risk triggering discomfort among some whites. I've met black men who, when stopped by white cops at night, think the best protection is to act dumb and deferential.

...

Shipler displays an interesting form of racism. Any uppity while person who suggest that Obama might be elitist is a closet racist. He appears to be taking the position that because Obama is black he is above the criticism that would come to a non black candidate. This seems to be a racist attitude that is demeaning to Obama as it is to the whites he is charging with racism. I did not use the word elitist when describing Obama's remarks. I used the word condescending and insulting. I am sure that Shipler is up to the job of construing those remarks as racist, but they were not and only some one with a chip on their shoulder would think so.