Kinkfishery and Kingcakery: More on Race in Louisiana Politics - Jarvis DeBerry has a very sensible column in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on how the race issue flowed through the recent gubernatorial election in ways that corrupted ALL groups - black, white, whatever. He gets to the point:

So you had some black people who seemed to be counting on a racist response because they thought it would help their candidate win, some Jindal supporters convinced that the "nonwhite" label harmed their candidate and some xenophobic residents pleased with what they think was this paper's gaffe for using that label in a headline.

No wonder racism is still with us. We seem incapable of living without it. We seem to call upon it if we think it will suit our purposes.

It's a very good column. Read the whole thing.