From smearing President Barack Obama and former presidential advisor Van Jones to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Republican right wing has clearly shown that it is fully committed to fueling racial division as part of a political agenda.

We are accustomed to Republicans attacking Democrats and vice versa. But the racial fear-mongering that has characterized recent campaigns and criticisms against black and Hispanic leaders is unacceptable. Republicans must repudiate the incipient racism that threatens to engulf their party. Democrats must not cede any ground to racial and cultural bullies.

Earlier this month, we saw one Republican push political discourse far beyond accepted bounds, to the rebuke of Congress. During Obama’s speech on health care reform, Rep. Joe Wilson called the president a liar. It’s hard to imagine Wilson, who was mentored by the segregationist Strom Thurmond, showing such blatant disrespect for a white president.

Before this, Fox pundit Glenn Beck wildly claimed that Obama has a deep-seated hatred of white people, thus earning himself a massive popular boycott of his TV show. Beck reacted to the boycott by launching a smear campaign against Van Jones. Prior to joining the government, Jones was a co-founder of Color of Change, the organization leading the anti-Beck boycott.

At rallies, Republican leaders and commentators have stoked racism instead of denouncing it. The so-called “tea party” demonstrations have featured numerous placards with virulently racist messages.

The shameful truth is that the racist right has a problem with people of color in power. To them, an African American, Hispanic or Asian landing a significant position does not represent a move towards fulfilling America’s promise. Instead, it is perceived as encroachment on a “pure” America of the imagined past.

This racist attitude was abundantly evident in attacks against Sonia Sotomayor. In their distortions of her speeches and record, most Republicans tried to frame her as a danger to white men. They insisted that her life experience, as a woman of color in America, was invalid, separate and unequal, when it came to the law.

Sadly, instead of pushing back against a growing racist strategy, the Democrats and the White House have chosen not to fight. They allowed Jones, a progressive advisor on environmental quality, to walk away. They failed to call the Beck-marchers on their overt racism.

Caving to the Beck-mongers of racial division should never be an option because it does not work. They are insatiable. They refuse to accept our validity as full participants in American society.

Instead, responsible Republicans and Democrats, most especially Congressional leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, must stand firm and speak loudly against divisive, racist campaigns. 

Contributed by El Diario La Prensa NY - This editorial is running simultaneously in African American and Latino publications across this country due to the urgency of the moment for diversity and racial relations.