Red herring

Obama is the red herring of racism in the US.

Yes, his election brought out racists. Duh. However, a certain segment of Republicans had been long pushing the idea that not Democrat was a real American and that no election of a Democrat was valid. Kinda was we're seeing now with Biden.

But racism "showing up" when Obama was elected?

Yes, we started seeing it more. But it's not because of a Black president. He's a red herring. The correlation.

The causation?

Cell phone cameras.

I mean, really. It's a lot harder to deny racism when you see on with your own eyes. Of course you can always "yeah, but what happened before they started filming?" try to dismiss it, but seeing things happen is a powerful antidote to that.

Obama didn't cause racism to get worse in this country, though the crazies who don't believe in the legitimacy of any Democrats in power used racism to further discredit him. He just happened to come to power at the same time as the smartphone.

We could no longer deny the racism and racist acts that happened in front of us.