In an election season rife with controversy of all sorts, the specter of racism has reappeared now that we're in the home stretch. With Election Day less than a week away, it's not just coal miners in West Virginia and "hardworking white Americans" in Western Pennsylvania that are causing the stir. Nowadays, McCain-Palin events seem more like the Salem Witch Trials than political rallies.

Before Palin publicly accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" and then paused to allow the crowd to cheer and chant a harmony of the words "terrorist" and "Muslim," I didn't think that the subtle racism of the primary season could or would become more overt. I was wrong. At a rally in Ohio, some of the comments recorded by reporters (check out the YouTube videos) included fears about "blacks taking over" after an Obama victory and the concern that "Barack and his wife might be secretly anti-white." Another man at the rally said, "He must be a terrorist. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." Why will Sarah Palin reprimand a spectator calling her a "hottie," but not respond to supporters chanting "off with his head" and "kill him?"

These types of statements and the prevailing racist sentiment at many of these events seem to be the new standard for a McCain campaign that finds itself trailing by several points in every major poll not conducted by affiliates of Fox and Friends. Misconceptions about Barack Obama have begun to fuel the Republican campaign. Luckily, these polls seem to indicate that the GOP is running on vapors.

To McCain's credit, he at least rejected and repudiated the statement that Obama was an "untrustworthy A-RAB" by the woman known to SNL fans as "Crazy McCain Lady." However, he should be more proactive in trying to stomp out this mentality amongst his supporters; instead of pausing for applause after he likens Obama to a terrorist, he should remind his supporters that chanting "terrorist" and "A-RAB" is entirely inappropriate and has no part in his campaign.

If he really wanted to stop the hate-mongering and didn't actually rely on it to win the election, he would not have appealed to the latent racism of the general public by invoking the image of former Fannie Mae exec Franklin Raines, a black man with no real connection to Obama, in a recent ad that accuses Obama of using Raines as an economic adviser. If there was no racial element to this ad and it was a genuine attempt to link Obama to the economic crisis, McCain surely would have chosen to highlight Senator Obama's choice of Jim Johnson to help him in vetting prospective running mates. Johnson is a far clearer bridge between Obama and Fannie Mae, but inconveniently happens to be white.

Additionally, McCain outraged many black Americans when he contemptuously referred to Senator Obama as "that one." Granted, reading racism into his words might be taking it a bit too far: while McCain's comment certainly portrayed his sense of superiority over his opponent, whether that sense is racial is not for us to judge. Regardless, Senator McCain's impulsive remark reflects a lack of attention to the implications of the words he chooses (perhaps appropriate diction is too much to ask of such a maverick). McCain may not in fact be a racist, but not unlike a certain president I can think of, he has no filter between his brain and mouth. His off-the-cuff reference to Obama in the debate is not an isolated blunder, either: in January, McCain commented, "I'm not interested in trading with Al-Qaeda. All they want to trade is burkas," and back in 2000, he told reporters that he "hated the gooks" and would "hate them as long as [he] live[s]."

The race-baiting strategy also manifests itself in certain euphemisms that the McCain-Palin campaign uses as buzzwords in their stump speeches. For instance, McCain's idea of "real America" seems suspiciously similar to "white America." This type of rhetoric tries to solidify the idea that Obama is an outsider and could never put his "country first" like McCain - not because of McCain's extensive military service, but because of the melanin content of Obama's skin.

Maybe there's nothing that we can do to stem the tides of racism in this country; I was just starting to think that race relations were dramatically improving. Despite racism rearing its ugly head (not unlike Putin, according Palin's teleprompter) in this election, though, many political analysts believe that race will have no real detrimental effect on Obama come Election Day. And to all those racists out there: Heed McCain's half-hearted words, "No ma'am (or sir), sit down."