Have White People Lost Their Minds?

Steven Thrasher at The Village Voice has a theory on the current political deadlock, on Arizona's immigration bill, the ground zero mosque, Glenn Beck, Christine O'Donnell, and Carl Paladino: White people have gone stark raving mad. The lunacy infecting white America, Thrasher argues, is the result of large-scale demographic shifts. Paraphrasing Ronald Brownstein's July National Journal article, "The Gray and the Brown," Thrasher writes that "older white folks are losing their shit as they're being replaced by young brown and black kids while the economy is in the crapper." All this slow-building tension came to a head in 2008 when Obama was elected. Now "White people have simply gone sheer fucking insane," he writes. Far-out theories get mainstream credence—a quarter of Americans believe Obama was born in another country, only 42 percent believe he is a Christian—and candidates like O'Donnell and Paladino whose records would have relegated them to the distant fringe now seem to be viable candidates. In the end, Thrasher writes, the browns and the grays "will—one way or another—have to learn to get along."