That's an interesting question, but I'm not really clear on what you're asking.

My observation is that we can't talk about racism openly, but that discussions about voting are wide open.Are you saying that we can't talk about voting openly?

I'll throw some things out on the table and maybe we can bring both into the open?

Mr. Obama has an extremely racist friend, mentor, and Pastor in Rev Wright. Obama's supporters, and most Dems, say it's no big thing. Of course, it IS a big thing when a Republican shows any traces of having such friends. In fact, it's front page news for weeks.

How is that fair and open? How does that contribute anything to any discussion?

In another forum I made a remark that certain Muslim immigrants to London are more interested in bringing their culture into Britain than actually assimilating. Look up the term Londonistan. Naturally, the Brit in the discussion called me a bigoted racist hatemonger, or words to that effect.

So as far as I can tell, discussion about race is open as long as it's within one's little clique and agrees with the group-think.

The KKK can get together in their meeting room with their ilk and hold race discussions. Think they'll all agree? Rev KKK Wright can get together in a metting room with his ilk and have a race discussion. Think there will be any disagreement between parties in that room? No, I don't think so either.

Put both racist groups in the same room and what will happen? Probably not reasonable discussion. (we could get together and sell tickets and popcorn...) But i'll bet you that any and all news coverage that's even slighty favorable will be in favor of Wright and Co. Coverage on left wing blogs will be heavily favorable to Wright.

So as I see it... race discussion is wide open as long as you agree with everything said by the current politically correct views on race.

Otherwise you'd better be wearing your armor plate, fire-proof underwear, and be typing from a bunker, because the firestorm is coming.

Some years back Mr. Clinton made some noises about having a national discussion on race. Of course, what he meant was he wanted a discussion only between people who completely agree with the liberal/left PC view of race. No one else need apply.

There will never be an open national discussion on race unless all sides are given equal respect. Currently the non-PC side gets brutally flamed whenever it says anything on the subject.

Interesting that it's the side that most loudly preaches tolerance and diversity that does most of the flaming.

For example - Rush Limbaugh might say something on race. Are his remarks met with, "That was an interesting comment, here's why he's wrong...?" No. Far from it. Lots of insults, lots of attacks, even ridicule, but no discussion. Unless it's by people who already agree with him.

A Black conservative can enter the discussion, sometimes. Bill Cosby, who probably isn't a conservative, entered it sometime back.His words were either ignored, shrugged off, or shunted off to page 47. It's hard to imagine a white person being allowed to say the things he did.

Voting? I see open discussions about voting all the time. Civil discussions between opposing sides. Very rarely on race.

Elections? A number of people feel that the reason people, like me, will never vote for Obama is because he's black. I expect they've closed their minds to the possibility that we might not like Obama due to his policies (none of which I like, for example) or his many warts (figuratively speaking. He does have very clear skin. ;) )

But election discussion is wide open.

So add your comments. Let's expand on this. What exactly, do you mean with your question?