Video: Glenn Beck attempts to justify his claim that President Obama is a racist

  According to Beck half of Americans are racist.

Glenn Beck spent a large amount of time on his radio program today trying to explain how he can call President Obama a racist.  You can listen to the audio clip below to hear Beck's argument.

Beck first defined racism as "discrimination or prejudice based on race."  Beck provides no source for his definition.  The two definitions I have found differ greatly from that of Beck.

Meriam-Webster defines racism as:

a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences  produce an inherent superiority of one particular race"

Meanwhile the online-free dictionary defines a racist as:

a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others"

Finally Dictionary.com defines racism as:

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others."

Notice how in the three separate sources I provide the belief in the "superiority" of one race is always denoted as part of racism or being a racist.  Beck strangely leaves out this element in the definition from his nameless source.  There is a reason Beck leaves out this crucial element of the definition.  Beck has absolutely no evidence that President Obama has ever denoted one race as being superior to another race.  Instead, Beck tries to weasel out of his way out of his comment by using a random definition which does not properly define racism and then talking about affirmative action.

To meet his definition of racism Beck claims President Obama is a racist because the President supports affirmative action policies.  While it is true that President Obama does support some form of affirmative action it is worth noting the President does not support quotas which are considered the most controversial element of affirmative action.  Instead, the President simply favors race being one factor of many being taken into account in decisions regarding college admission, etc.  The President does not favor a policy in which universities must admit so many African-Americans, Hispanics, etc.  Furthermore, if supporting affirmative action makes one a racist then a full half of the American population must be racist as polls done by Gallup and the Pew Research Center show that over half the population support affirmative action.  So Beck tries to get away with calling half of America racist while he claims innocence while invoking race in the health care debate of all issues.  That is hypocrisy at the worst level.