America will never be “post-racial.”

When Barack Obama was elected president, so many people whom I would have thought had better sense said that America was now “post racial.” The election of an African American proved it.

Yes, it was nice and all, and I am sure many white people were nervously patting themselves on the back, saying, “I did it. I voted for a black man.” That meant to them, I would suppose, that they had transcended their racism.

But America’s racism is America’s thorn. It is deep-seated and it has metastasized. It permeates everything that happens here. It affects not only African Americans, but people of color, period.

When I was little, I used to ask, “What’s wrong with white people? Why are they so mean?”

As I get older, I have wondered, and have heard people say, “Why did God create white people, or at least why did and does God allow them to think as they do? C’mon God!!”

The new immigration law in Arizona, the law that now makes it no longer OK to teach ethnic studies in Arizona public schools, and now, the vote in Texas to rewrite American history, lifting up “American” ideals like free enterprise, and taking away important truths about the Civil War, for starters, is the truth to my statement that America will never be post racial.

Karen Armstrong, prolific religious writer, says that fundamentalism erupts when people feel threatened, when they fear that what they have always known will be taken away.

I have come to the conclusion that there is religious fundamentalism, but there is racial fundamentalism as well, in America for sure, and probably throughout the world.

When Tea Party members say they want their country back, what they are saying is that they want the “good ol’ days” when white people had almost absolute power, when there was no way paved for people of color to get onto the playing field, and when it was all justified by God. What they want “back” is a time when people of color knew their “place” and stayed there.

That reality seems to be unraveling before their very eyes, and they are frightened and angry.

Now, to add insult to injury, there is a man named Rand Paul in Kentucky, who, among other things, thinks private businesses ought to be allowed to not serve black people if they want. Big business, according to him and probably scores of others, has done much to erode the rights of white people.

And to add a hit to that injury, the folks in Texas want to teach kids that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. One woman said the cause of the war was a dispute over states’ rights. Right. It was … because states wanted the right to have slaves, and too many people, including people in the federal government, were saying that slavery were wrong.

The special on CNN on what people are teach their children about race was revealing. Little black kids and little white kids still think that black people are bad. They are getting that message from we adults who have not been healed. And when sick people teach children, they become sick children who become sick adults.

There was an interesting episode on “Law and Order.” An avowed racist shot a black man to death who he thought had taken “his” cab. The white man felt no remorse; he felt that black people, and Muslims, and whomever .. were bad people and were out to hurt white people. His attorney created an interesting defense: to be racist was to be mentally ill.

It was a cop out defense. It made me sick. The racist was convicted but the episode, coupled with all I see and hear, made me come up with my belief that America will never be post racial.

We have never dealt with our illness, our thorn, and we are now becoming even more infected.

Racism is America’s thorn.

That is a candid observation.

I do not understand.

A white police officer in Philadelphia shoots himself but puts out the story that he was shot by an African American male who was dark skinned with braided hair and a tatoo on his face.

In Arizona, there has been not only a controversial and divisive immigration law passed,but now a law has been passed which prohibits ethnic studies in Arizona public schools.

In an interview on CNN, anchor Ali Veshi said that the law was aiming at stopping courses that promoted “overthrow of the American government.”

I do not understand.

Well, maybe I do. I remember author Karen Armstrong saying that fundamentalism always raises up when that with which people are familiar, or that which people know, begins to change, or changes too much.

She was talking about fundamentalism in religion, but could it be that there is a sociological or societal fundamentalism as well?

When Tea Party members say they “want their country back,” are they rebelling against a nation which has changed too much?

This is a new day, for sure. The days of America being a country ruled and controlled primarily by white men is over. The days of the dominant population of this nation being white Anglo Saxon Protestant are also over, and, presumably, so is all that that domination meant.

That has to be scary for the dominant group and maybe scary for others, too. African Americans are no longer the largest minority ethnic group in the United States, and, if human nature may safely be predicted, I would assume that we will see the historically oppressed oppress the new majority.

I see the bigotry coming up out of the pores of America’s skin. There is some concern that the United States Supreme Court will have no Protestants for the first time in its history. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, introducing a story on President Obama’s newest nominee for court, Elena Kagan, said, “There are only Catholics and Jews on the court. What’s up with that?”

I winced when he said it because it didn’t sound complimentary, though I don’t think he meant any harm, but again, there is that sociological/society bigotry rising up.

The words being used, the laws being passed, the antics being carried out (as with the white cop in Philly who lied about being shot by an African American man) are not a good thing, not a good mix. One group of people are scared out of their wits that everything they have ever known is falling apart at the seams. Other groups are getting angrier and angrier at the scared group of people, who will act and react to their anger in fear and, probably, with violence.

It feels like we are in a bubbling cauldron, and it feels like it’s all about to spill over. Bigotry never cooks well, and when it spills over, its residue is hard and not easily removable.

We need to do something, and soon, before the bubbling cauldron spills its contents and we have a mess that we will never be able to clean up.

That would be a candid observation.