It's important to understand that the real target of the students at George Fox University who hung Barack Obama in effigy is not actually Obama, but the black students who attend school there. A sign was hung around the effigy reading "Act Six reject," a reference to the school's scholarship program for minority students. The message? Black students aren't welcome here. Racism is often rationalized with statements like "if black people only worked harder, they'd do better." But what often occurs is that when black people do perform with excellence, the hostility becomes more pronounced, as in this case, rather than actually subsiding.
This has historical precedent, such as the Rosewood massacre in 1923 or the Tulsa race riots in 1921. The white residents who burned Rosewood didn't want blacks to "work harder," they were furious that they had created a thriving black community. This, like the vandalism at George Fox, was actually a hostile response to black people striving to succeed. Less flagrant displays of contempt for black students occur everyday on colleges around the country of every political persuasion, ostensibly because of affirmative action. But the real reason is that the last thing such people want is for black folks to succeed.
--A. Serwer
