Rush Limbaugh, backlash and other fears

By now, most of you have seen the replay of the Rush Limbaugh clip where he says something to the effect of "We're being advised to hope President Obama succeeds (because he is the first black president) but I personally hope he fails." I'm not a Rush fan, or even a viewer, so I first saw the clip on The Daily Show. I thought maybe Jon Stewart was making a bad joke, but deep down I knew better. By the time I saw it replayed on CNN, MSNBC, and CBS news, it seemed my fear and loathing for statements like that were fortunately not the minority. If this sentiment was expressed about our President right after 9/11, Mr. Limbaugh might be a Gitmo grad by now.
It seemed no coincidence that about the time I was queasy over the say/replay of that unfortunate person, three other pings hit my radar. First, I got a call from the eighty-five year old woman who raised me, who happens to be a woman of color, to talk about how wonderful that our country has taken a step forward although my old hometown, according to her and she still lives there, has not. We talked about the old Jim Crow days and my family's "difference." My mom was a closet Texican. My dad, a Jew by birth who experienced both the quota system while growing up and life in a Nazi prison camp, lived in fear of being "found out" in our All Christian Town.
I'd gotten off the phone with her and was checking email when I discovered a request for "National 'Hug a Caucasian Day" from a young friend. Obviously, in some circles I don't qualify as a Caucasian, but I pass. There is a backlash of fear that some of our majority privilege might be diminished. It reminded me of the late sixties, being one of the few white people on the bus to Washington D.C. and feeling the hostility. "Hey, I didn't choose my color! I'm here trying to right the wrongs!" I wanted to shout. It got so bad on that bus ride-- between people threatening to burn us, jail us, or bomb us and my fellow travelers glaring and in one case, spitting on us--that the other three white people began to invent black relatives.
The final thread in this little saga was a note from my second reader (remember packet #5 is coming soon) to remark that I hadn't addressed white privilege in my thesis which is about governance and fundraising for NGO's. The thesis uses our school in Kenya as an example of what not to do. Okay, I whined a little. "That's not what this thesis is about" not because I didn't agree that there were issues , but because I didn't want to write another, perhaps more relevant thesis, about white people going to Africa to Save the Natives. It happens a lot. Still, all this concentration on race in such a short period of time made me feel, well, vunerable somehow.
Maybe what is really bugging me is that I have made so little progress. I cried for joy as I watched the inauguration so maybe I am just as hung up on race as Rush--in a different way. My emotional response to my second reader was a flashback to the sixties. Have I gained so little depth of understanding of the experience of people of color? And yes, as I hit "publish post" I am a little nervous about some people finding out I am a half breed Jew/Texican. What am I so afraid of? What are any of us so afraid of?