White working class: Clinging to guns, religion and Romney

via Chicago Tribune.

Here is Barack Obama’s full quote:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.  And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.  And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
— Barack Obama, April 6, 2008.

There is nothing inherently racist in Obama’s quote.  While it’s true that: (a) small towns in Pennsylvania incredibly white and it appears Obama means, “small town white folk,” and (b) he characterizes these people as “anti-immigrant”, Obama was at least careful not to directly inject race into the statement.

We really need to find a way to come together on this race issue.