No doubt many conservative apologists across the country have been busy lambasting liberals in recent days for what Brian Sweeney calls “playing the race card” when discussing attacks on President Barack Obama and his push for health care reform. But I don’t have to search far and wide, because Sweeney’s own Sept. 16 Alaska Voices blog entry and Paul Jenkins’ rant in today’s Anchorage Daily News give me plenty to respond to locally.

Both Sweeney and Jenkins essentially call those who have raised the racism issue dishonest. Or even racist in their own way, a curious claim indeed. These liberal sinners have included former President Jimmy Carter and New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman and, Jenkins adds, “their pals.”

I can’t know whether racism sparked South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s now infamous “You lie!” outburst while the president addressed Congress, and am willing to accept that it was triggered by mere righteous anger and no prejudice. But I would also argue that Jenkins and Sweeney and “their pals” with similar conservative credentials are either naïve or in denial if they really believe that racial prejudice has not influenced the recent debate on health care reform and at least some of the vitriol directed at our president.

Contrary to what Jenkins insists, no one on the left has charged, “If you disagree with President Barack Obama you are a racist.” That’s ridiculous and inflammatory and Jenkins should know better. But then he likes to rile things up and what better way than to make sweeping, unsupported charges like that.

Perhaps the problem isn’t specifically racism. Maybe what some far-right critics of President Obama are doing is to foment xenophobia. My dictionary describes a xenophobe as “A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign people.”

Now isn’t it interesting that the so-called “birther movement” rejects the legitimacy of President Obama, while arguing that he was born in Africa, not Hawaii, and that his birth certificate is a forgery. If that doesn’t appeal to xenophobia (or spring from it), what does? And what about the fact that some Republicans in Congress have expressed skepticism about Obama’s citizenship or have been unwilling to acknowledge it?

Because of his name and race, others have continued to assert, and presumably believe, that our president is secretly a Muslim, with an agenda dangerous to our nation’s security and well being. As noted on the Urban Legends site “the entire case, such as it is, rests on a confused and error-ridden recitation of Obama’s upbringing and supposed childhood influences. It also rests on – or exploits – a deep fear and mistrust of the Muslim faith.”

I would add that it also feeds upon the fact that Barack Obama’s father was a black African who was raised a Muslim (but had, by the way, lost his faith and become an atheist by the time he fathered Barack).

Now let me make it clear for Jenkins and Sweeney and any of “their pals” who might want to take these comments out of context: I am NOT saying that all, or even most, of the president’s political opponents believe these things. But it’s clear that some Americans – and Alaskans – do. Only last weekend, participants at a protest rally in Anchorage repeated the Muslim and birther charges against Obama.

Can liberals truly be the only ones who believe that racism still exists in the United States and remains a powerful influence in some parts of the country? It is ridiculous to claim that racial prejudices do not influence people’s attitudes, beliefs, and actions.

As Rudy Wittshirk says in his own recent Alaska Voices commentary, “the race card has always been in play” because racism is part of our national legacy and, like it or not, protest it or not, racism and xenophobia are part of our country’s past and present.

Worse than racism or xenophobia, though, are the people who fuel fears and anger, even hatred. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are examples of that. So is Sarah Palin, who has demonized the president and spread fear with her comments about the “evil” death panels that Obama’s health care plan would allegedly convene, a proven falsehood that our former governor apparently refuses to retract or apologize for.

For the record, I am not calling Palin a racist. Nor am I calling any of the other conservatives mentioned in this blog racists or xenophobes. But too many right-wing “leaders” promote and deepen the fears and anger of those Americans who are. They should be denounced for that.

Like Paul Krugman – and likely Jimmy Carter and Maureen Dowd and “their pals” – I suspect that the driving force behind at least some of the mob-like protests of President Obama’s health-care plan “is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the birther movement” and furthermore that “cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety.”

And contrary to what Jenkins claims, white liberals feel no need to “prop up” President Obama because he’s not strong or smart enough. What bunk. Again and again Obama has proven he can take the heat – and remain civil even when his opponents rage in disrespectful ways.

Jenkins is also blowing smoke – and I’m betting he knows it – when he argues that the intent of liberal commentators who bring up the issue of racism is to “stifle opposition and dissent. It is intimidation pure and simple.” We liberals – like most conservatives, I assume – welcome open and vigorous debate, as long as such debate sticks to ideas, belief systems, and policies. But some of us will also protest when racism and xenophobia and other prejudices tied to racial, religious, sexual, or other cultural differences rear their ugly heads into the debate. A far greater sin would be silence.