THE HOPES OF NOV. 4TH ARE CRUSHED BY THE REALITY OF NOV 5TH

An interracial couple in Pennsylvania who woke up

to find the remains of a burnt cross in their front garden.
A Calif. town which saw cars and garages vandalized

with swastikas, racist epithets

and slogans such as "Go Back to Africa."
Black effigies hung from nooses in an island community in Maine.
Students chanting "assassinate Obama" on a school bus in Idaho.

Barack Obama's historic election as America's first black president has led to a surge of racist incidents across the United States, hate-crime monitoring groups and analysts say. Here are more examples of an every widening and expanding white backlash since the election of our 44th president, Barack Obama.

The mayor of an eastern Idaho town where second- and third-grade students on a school bus chanted "assassinate Obama!" after the Nov. 4 election has publicly apologized, saying there's no excuse for such behavior.

The Mount Desert Islander weekly in Maine reported that a third effigy of a black man had been found hanging from a tree in the area since the election. This was was in Somesville, following reports of others in Tremont and Bar Harbort. The paper observes: "State police also are investigating the incidents, which are believed to be in response to the election of Sen. Barack Obama as president."

And this e-mail from a high school junior in a small, Iowan town..."I'm not sure who to email on this, but there have been several derogatory things said about Obama in our school, and one of them got a student suspended. I go to a school in a little town called Letts, Iowa. We are pretty down home, country road farm kids out here. But never, in my 11 years at the school, have I ever heard the conversation take such a negative turn."The remark that the student was suspended for was this, "Well, it's called the White House for a reason. We need to get that God damn N----- out of there."

An incident in another Obama-friendly state, Michigan, in the town of Buchanan. Members of the South County Democratic Club woke up Saturday to find their building vandalized with swastikas and racist comments, spray painted on the side of the structure.

"Anyone naive enough to believe that Barack Obama's landmark victory would mean an end to racial bigotry and stupidity need look no farther than Ossining for proof positive that we still have a ways to go. Americans made history by electing Obama the first black president; what they didn't do, by any stretch, is wipe away years of ingrained racial prejudice, insensitivity and, once again, stupidity."Thomas Reddy, assistant village fire chief, deserved a swift boot to the curb for circulating a 'knock-knock' joke that ends with a caricature of Obama and the words 'Eyes Yo New Prezident.'

And, finally onto Wasilla, Alaska, which boosted home owner Sarah Palin throughout the election campaign, provided column space this week to a local student who alleged anti-Obama racial comments the day after his election. Here's an excerpt from The Frontiersman op-ed by Waverli Raine.* Finally the campaign was over and I was actively supporting our new president, even though I knew I would be vastly out numbered at school. I expected complaints and qualms about the new president, but I was not prepared for the flat-out racist remarks said openly in the halls and classrooms. I was appalled. While I sat at my desk trying to do my work I could hear my fellow classmates:“I think we should kill Obama,” one said.“I hope someone comes up and shoots him in the head,” another would say.“I hate Obama … he’s black.”

There was evidence of a surge in traffic on white supremacist Internet websites such as StormFront, whose server crashed on the day after the November 4 election due to the uptick in activity. Not only has the election of Obama sparked the embers of racism, but look at the increase in non-white immigration; the recent estimate by the US Census Bureau that whites would lose their majority status by 2040 and rising unemployment all helped create a climate favorable for hate groups. Add to all of that the idea of a black man in the White House and you have a very significant number of whites who feel as if they've lost everything, that the country built by their forefathers is somehow slipping away from them.

Perhaps Mark Potok, director of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center said it best, when he was quoted as saying, "Barack Obama may well prove to be the perfect storm that incites a nerve within the hardcore racist movement in the United States."

Obviously any hopes that the Obama victory somehow meant that America is now officially beyond racism, and it finally marked the completion of the work of the civil rights movement, Dr. King and those that preceded him are sadly naive. It seems the farther we come, the more inescapable this country's unfortunate racist legacy seems to be.

One thing John McCain did get right...this country needs more than hopes and dreams...........and change........real substantial, meaningful change may be just a fantasy, for we cannot escape the one thing that needs changing the most in America.............ourselves.