I'm sure these tactics trouble many Clinton supporters, regardless of race, but private groans of discomfort and disapproval are not enough in the face of the steady manipulation of racial cues by this campaign.

And it's not over: A recent Clinton fund-raising letter asks for donations in order to "level the playing field" against Obama.  It cleverly borrows from anti-affirmative action rhetoric of the past. Can't let that "black" candidate have an "unfair advantage" is the leaden implication.

This is all straight out of the Lee Atwater play book.  Politics in this mass-mediated age is decidedly a matter of symbols and signals.  The signals sent by the Clinton camp are regularly about race.  They scream one thing: "Hey, I'm the white candidate over here, remember? Don't let that slick affirmative action beneficiary over there fool you.  "

Consider a few hypotheticals: If John McCain had made Ferraro's remarks we would already have had a press conference from Julian Bond.  If Mike Huckabee had run a similar campaign, the civil rights community would be in an up roar.  If Mitt Romney had done these things protest organizing would already be underway.

The silence from the civil rights establishment is not doing Democrats any favors.  Should Clinton get the nomination, I can already imagine the Republican strategy to suppress black voter turnout.

It will be called the "Remember Obama" ad.  The radio announcer would say: "Remember how Obama was building a head of steam and winning over more and more working class white voters, North and South?  Remember how the Clinton campaign ran that frightening red phone ad?   Remember when Obama was denounced as a beneficiary of 'preferential treatment' by a high ranking member of Clinton's campaign? Can you really trust the Democrats?  Can you really trust Hillary Clinton?"

Already, I can envision Republican ads designed to do exactly this.  And if things continue as they are, such ads are likely to have great traction among black voters.

Perhaps more concerning is that if Obama wins the nomination and the McCain campaign or some independent group runs ads like the "red phone," civil rights leaders, by their silence now, will have lost the moral credibility to label such an ad as race-baiting.

Civil rights leaders have traditionally stood up, even when it wasn't convenient or easy to do so. Something as deliberate and as poisonous as the systematic Clinton race-baiting strategy should have long ago  been addressed by traditional civil rights leadership.

If it is morally repugnant for Republicans to do these things—which it is—then it is morally repugnant for Democrats to do them too. Those, like Rush Limbaugh, who have long charged civil rights leaders with hypocrisy can delight in the present moment.  If Obama is the nominee, the free pass extended to the Clinton's on race-baiting will have to be accorded  Republicans, as well.

Politics often involves ugly fights, but by passively accepting what has gone on so far, the civil rights establishment has let us all down. 

Lawrence Bobo is the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.