A Stain to Erase in South Carolina

Rusty DePass, the South Carolina Republican activist who infamously "joked" that an escaped zoo gorilla was probably an ancestor of Michelle Obama, has learned the meaning of "hell to pay."

His teachable moment has provided multiple curricula on a range of subjects, including what appears to be racism fatigue in the Deep South.

DePass, a former chairman of the state Elections Commission, has all but performed the Stations of the Cross in apologizing for his remark the past several days. Originally made on his Facebook page in what he thought was a private exchange with a friend, the comment was picked up by a local political blogger, Will Folks (former communications director for Gov. Mark Sanford), who posted it on his Web site, FITSNews.com.

Quicker'n you can say cheese grits, the comment went viral. And DePass -- who is neither a public official nor, officially, a spokesman for the GOP -- has lost his commercial real estate job and been roundly chastised in a series of public condemnations.

Thus far, he has apologized twice, including Wednesday at a news conference called by the state NAACP. Democratic members of the South Carolina House of Representatives twice tried to pass a resolution expressing regret to the first lady, but they were defeated by the Republican majority. More than 400 people have joined a Facebook group called "Rusty DePass is an insufferable piece of garbage."

Has DePass been sufficiently punished yet? Even Folks, who broke the story, says reaction has been excessive:

"What he said was over the line, but the response to it has also been over the line. There's no way someone in the private sector should get bullied out of their job for a comment like that. We have to balance respect for all races and cultures, which is an essential ingredient to the kind of society we want to be, but there has to be some semblance of proportion."

To be clear, DePass's remark was racist, and there's no way to spin it otherwise, as he first tried to. Racist jokes have become commonplace since Barack Obama's election, and, sadly, they keep popping up in Republican quarters.

Last spring, Folks wrote about a Republican state representative who had a flier on his desk showing blacks fleeing Obama, who was depicted as promising jobs to all African Americans. In another recent incident, a staffer for Tennessee state Sen. Diane Black e-mailed a composite picture of all the U.S. presidents. The Obama square was solid black with two big eyes.

These fliers, jokes and antics are not isolated incidents but are part of an ugly subterranean culture of entrenched racism. Living in South Carolina the past 20 years, I've noticed that people who say racist things never think of themselves as racist. What that means, of course, is that they'd never act on their attitudes. They might even find the N-word offensive.

But they'll make racist cracks as DePass did -- or circulate fliers that portray the Obamas in demeaning ways. Seen the image of the watermelon patch in front of the White House? Or the display of Obama books at Barnes & Noble in Coral Gables, Fla., with the book about monkeys slipped into it?

DePass is hardly alone. But he has been thrown to the lions in a sort of spontaneous cleansing ritual. After decades of shame for the state's original sin -- not to mention providing a butt for the nation's jokes -- South Carolinians are tired of being embarrassed.