A famed novelist with a racist point of view is perfectly fine with the elitist left in America. Here’s Phillip Roth interviewed in Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Do you still care about politics? Are you following the 2008 election?

Roth: Unfortunately, yeah. I didn’t, until about two weeks ago — until then it wasn’t real. Then I watched the New Hampshire primary debates, and the Republicans are so unbelievably impossible. I watched the Democratic ones and became interested in Obama. I think I’ll vote for him.

SPIEGEL: What made you interested in Obama?

Roth: I’m interested in the fact that he’s black. I feel the race issue in this country is more important than the feminist issue. I think that the importance to blacks would be tremendous. He’s an attractive man, he’s smart, he happens to be tremendously articulate. His position in the Democratic Party is more or less okay with me. And I think it would be important to American blacks if he became president.

SPIEGEL: It could change society, couldn’t it?

Roth: Yes, it could. It would say something about this country, and it would be a marvelous thing. I don’t know whether it’s going to happen. I rarely vote for anybody who wins. It’s going to be the kiss of death if you write in your magazine that I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. Then he’s finished!

It would say what? That black people can advance? That since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the US has seen self-made black billionaires?

Seen Time-Warner and American Express, the biggest companies in their field, run by black CEOs?

Seen two black Secretaries of State?

Seen white athletes at Duke railroaded for rape based on the flakey testimony of a black stripper?

SPIEGEL: The discussions around Obama remind us of your figure Coleman Silk, the hero of “The Human Stain,” who is black with unusually light skin and then invents a Jewish biography. What we mean is the questions of belonging, of right and wrong behavior. Is Barack Obama black enough?

Roth: I know this discussion goes on, but I think it will disappear if he gets the nomination. The reality of his running will wash that away. Anybody who’s half white and half black is considered black anyway. That’s one drop of blood.

SPIEGEL: For whites to consider him black, yes. But the question is whether the blacks consider him black.

Roth: They will once the election goes on. If he gets the nomination.

SPIEGEL: Do you actually believe that Obama could change Washington or could change politics?

Roth: I’m interested in what merely his presence would be. You know, who he is, where he comes from, that is the change. That is the same thing with Hillary Clinton, just who she is would create a gigantic change. As for all that other rhetoric about change, change, change — it’s pure semantics, it doesn’t mean a thing. They’ll respond to particular situations as they arise.

Why is this racist? If Roth ruled out voting for Obama because he’s black, there’d be no question that his attitude is racist. The opposite is equally true.