Former President Carter, who brought race to the forefront this week by saying the animosity toward President Obama is racially motivated, said Wednesday that he hopes future political leaders will condemn racist attacks.
“My hope is, and my expectation is, that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the President of the United States,” Carter said to a group of students at Emory University.
Despite attacks from conservatives and denials from the White House, Carter continued to assert that some personal attacks on Obama are based on his skin color.
“When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the President of the United States as an animal, or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kind of things are beyond the bounds of the way presidents have ever been accepted, even with people who disagree,” he said. “And I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been inlfuenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be President because he is African-American. It is a racist attitude.”
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has said repeatedly that the President does not believe criticism is based on the color of his skin.
Conservatives, such as RNC chairman Michael Steele, have attacked Carter’s assertion. Steele said Carter is “flat out wrong.”
In an NBC News interview Tuesday, Carter said, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.”
He added that he believes Obama will be able to “triumph over the racist attitude.”
