Conservatives are up in arms over a new book that says that President Obama sees the Tea Party as racist. See Fox News ("Obama Says Tea Party Is Racist In New Book"), along with slightly less inflammatory reactions from the Daily Caller and Red State.

The first thing to recognize is that Obama isn't "calling" the Tea Party racist. A private conversation of his is being reported, which is not the same thing as playing the race card. Second, Obama's viewpoint, which is broadly characterized, is (surprise!) more subtle than the headline suggest:

Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent " Tea Party " movement that was then surging across the country. Many middle-class and working-class whites felt aggrieved and resentful that the federal government was helping other groups, including bankers, automakers, irresponsible people who had defaulted on their mortgages, and the poor, but wasn't helping them nearly enough, he said.

A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to "take back" their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn't dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a "subterranean agenda" in the anti-Obama movement—a racially biased one—that was unfortunate. But he sadly conceded that there was little he could do about it.

His goal, he said, was to be as effective and empathetic a president as possible for all Americans. If he could accomplish that, it would advance racial progress for blacks more than anything else he could do.

Conservatives tend to be extraordinarily sensitive to accusations of racism, and they have developed a whole cottage industry of mocking and countering perceptions of racism within the Tea Party movement. To some extent, their sensitivity is understandable. I am sure that virtually all Tea Party members think of themselves as non- or anti-racists, committed to judging individuals on the content of their character. A few open racists have shown up at Tea Party rallies, and Tea Parties feel (again, understandably) that a tiny minority has been held up to taint all of them. They have gone out of their way to police rallies for racist signs. Moreover, the Tea party is organized around traditional right-wing public policy beliefs about government spending, and is almost completely uninterested in what we call "racial issues."

However, it is also demonstrably true that Tea Party sympathizers hold distinctly reactionary views on racial issues.