Greenwald has a great column here citing how racists are using the Obama campaign to trot out their hatred of black people. Following is just a snippet, but do read the entire column:

In comments, DrEyeBall makes a good and important point:

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this applies only to African-Americans. The sense of threatened tribalism is at the root of movement conservatism, and always has been. This is why it was so easy to sell most of white America on the Iraq war. Polls showed that 2/3 thought that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, or at least close ties to AlQ. . . .

Take almost any one of their “thoughtful” screeds about Islam and do a global search/replace from “Islam” to “niggers” and the text becomes instantly recognizable. This racist energy had for a long time been at least partly directed towards “the Communists” but now that it isn’t it is pretty much clear that Islam is now the designated nigger.

There is no better phrase to describe the animating feature of the modern Limbaugh/Kristol/Fox News conservative faction than “threatened tribalism.” The belief that they are good and pure, yet subjected to unprecedented systematic unfairness and threatened by some lurking Evil Other against whom war must be waged (the Muslim, the Immigrant, the Terrorist, the Communist, the Liberal, the Welfare Queen) is the centerpiece of their ugly worldview. The sentiments expressed here by Instapunk are now most commonly expressed towards the New Enemy — the Muslim — but the Wright episode is a nice reminder of how seamlessly it gets directed towards a whole host of other threatening, bad groups. Hence the blithe application of the term “sleeper cells” to black Americans. That’s what coalesces them and justifies everything. What matters is that there be some scary, malicious group about to harm them and America. The identity of the particular scary group at any given moment is really secondary.