This explains Robert Byrd...

An odd advice column over at Salon from about a week and a half ago has me thinking. The basic premise of the question is that the individual, having carefully cultivated a "proper, liberal, modern, progressive cover" and is afraid of "blowing it" when people find out he sings racist songs to himself. The songs, apparently, just kind of get stuck in his head and he'd rather they didn't. The advice he's given? Embrace his inner racist, and harness his white guilt to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless.

It's odd, actually, to see. Certainly, there are members of the Liberal Elite who evoke a clear condescension and clear racism in their actions and words but it's strange for someone to just come out and say - if you're a racist, become a Liberal and all will be forgiven.

I've got a stupid racist ditty playing in my head
Salon.com

When I was 12 or so and living in Outer White Generica aka the Tucson suburbs), a friend of mine taught me a racist little ditty...It is now almost 30 years later and that stupid little song has come back with a vengeance. I keep hearing it over and over in my head ("I don' care what de' white mon say..." I'll leave it at that)...

...I've become so paranoid that I'm going to blow my proper, liberal, modern, progressive cover that I'm only making it worse...What if I get caught? Help!

and the response:

Say a man stands behind a counter of steam trays dishing out hot lasagna to folks who have no money and no home and nothing to eat. As he dishes out the food, a little racist ditty from his childhood is running through his head. If we could monitor the music that is playing in his head, would we take that spoon away from him and beat him with it and throw him out of the soup kitchen? Or would we let him ladle out soup to the poor? What does it matter what racist little ditty is playing in your head? What matters is what you do...

...So you've got a stupid song playing in your head. What did you see on your way to work this morning? Did you see any poor people living in the streets? Did you see any people begging for food? Did you see anyone living with open sores because they have no money for medical care? What did you do about that? Did you stop to sing them a song?

...What could it possibly take to care for all these poor people of all races "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished"? A billion dollars? Ten billion dollars? A hundred billion dollars? What could it take to build a big building in the center of town and give everybody a bed who needs a place to sleep? What could it take to give everybody a good meal who is hungry? Keep it open 24 hours a day. Staff it with ministers, cooks and bouncers. Have drug and alcohol recovery meetings there. Put all the soup kitchens there. Put all the cots there. Put the mayor's office there. Put all the deacons and elders and mullahs and bishops and rabbis there. Put all the columnists and communists and free-marketeers and Christian fundamentalists there. Put everybody there who pretends to give a shit. Put me there. Put us all there. Give us showers and hot soup. Keep us there until we make it work. Do the same thing in every city and town. How hard could that be?..

...Our quivering introspection is a luxury of the very world whose wealth shields us from consequence, whose entertainment keeps us laughing like children, amused and placated while our neighbors starve and sleep on the streets and die of treatable diseases. The personal is personal. Feed somebody...

...It's not you. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault. None of us can do much on our own. We lack leaders. We lack consensus. Our moral imagination has been hijacked by an entertainment complex far more powerful than any writer or activist. Our publishing industry has been hijacked by soap companies and toy makers. Our churches have become the propaganda wings of political parties. We don't know how to run our own country. We don't know how to get it back. We don't know how to take care of each other.