[KevinTheOmnivore]

Forgive my reference, but I think it comes back to the John Edwards argument of "two Americas." I don't think any sort of conscious, overt racism played a part in it. Not much, anyway. I do think however that classism played a huge role in this, and one benefit of this may be that we begin to discuss such matters in this country again, since it tends to get to Americans when they see some of their countrymen (black, white, whatever) looking as if they were at the scene of a car bomb in Baghdad.