In a Washington Post article on increasing traffic to white supremacist websites as a result of Barack Obama’s presidential nomination, there’s a puzzling quote from the leader of one of the hate groups:

“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

“[A]n overtly nonwhite president”? What does that mean? Was there a “covertly” nonwhite president that I missed? Or is it some sort of implicit reference to Toni Morrison calling Bill Clinton the “first black president”? I don’t expect white supremacists to make a lot of sense, but it’s strange for the Post to use it as the first quote in the piece without an explanation.

Update 6/24 12:29 AM: Aha! In comments, Jeff suggests that Roper may have been referring to the possibility that Warren G. Harding was part black. The New York Times Magazine article he links to says “the circumstantial case for Harding’s mixed-race ancestry is intriguing though not definitive.”