Interesting story on All Things Considered tonight about how the Obama candidacy and its impending success are dragging the real racists out of the rural backwaters and gangland obscurity. Police are seeing an upswing in hate crimes, both trivial (defacing Obama posters) and not.

Part of the problem is that Obama is playing into the neo-Nazi and white supremacist narrative, said Brian Levin, who studies hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. What the groups were saying — “Jews and blacks coming out of the urban areas are going to take over this white nation of ours” — has occurred, he said.

You only have to look to the Internet to see how white supremacist leaders such as David Duke are using Obama to rally their troops. Duke has called Obama a “visual aid for hate groups.” He says an Obama presidency would provide indisputable proof that whites have lost control of America. “This is a cultural and racial battlefront,” said Levin. “Barack Obama is symbol No. 1 of the worst the future has to offer.”

Ironically, the white supremacists are actually divided on Obama’s candidacy. Some, for obvious reasons, refuse to vote for him. Others think that a vote for Obama is a positive step toward the impending “race war” due to wrack the country (cf. folks who support Israel as a step toward the End Times).

Me? I think the churning and rising of this sort of overt racism is a positive thing. An Obama presidency forces America to face what remains of racism in our psyche, not just in the reprehensible form of the David Dukes of this world, but in more subtle ways. That can only be a good thing, and if the roaches and other slimy critter pour out from under the rocks in the face of Obama in the White House, that will help us deny that they still live among us, or how their hatred has subtle echoes in our own cultural hearts.

The other thing it will do, directly opposite of riling up the racists, is demonstrate to the vast majority who might be a bit leery, a scosh apprehensive, even if they don’t even recognize where that anxiety is coming from, that a black man as President, once you’ve seen it, isn’t all that scary. The best way to combat racism, overt and subtle, is, essentially, to integrate, to let the Other become part of your everyday world. Once you see that a black man on TV every night isn’t something to be scared of, all the rants of the David Dukes become all that much more ridiculous.

(In parallel, I expect that as gays become more openly integrated into society — see California, of course, but also other states where civil unions and even gay marriage have been made legal, and, yet, the societal sky hasn’t fallen and civilization hasn’t turned into some great homosexual debauch — the fear of the unknown will, because it becomes known, diminish, and the doom-saying predictions of the Dobsons of the world that things like California’s Amendment 8 are the Last Straight Hope to protect our Great Christian Nation will be seen as goofy as people worrying about the dire and apocalyptic effects of giving women the right to vote.)

So even though the NPR story tends to get a bit scarifying at times, nearly blaming Obama for riling up all those racists, I think it’s a good thing that the white-first KKK a and neo-Nazi types are creeping out of the woodwork again. Sometimes you just have to turn over some rocks to see what comes scurrying out. Wearing heavy-soled boots, and not being afraid to use them in the circumstance, is highly advised.