Anti-Obama sign owner: I want people to think | The Herald

The sign is huge, about 4 feet by 6 feet, and three words scream out at drivers heading west on one of York County's busiest roads, S.C. 161 between Rock Hill and York.

The three words are "Obama," and "racist" and "idiot."

Not to see the sign is to drive blind. The sign works.

Obama is Barack Obama, America's first black president. The guy who owns the sign brought in the words "racist" and "idiot" to get people's attention.

The guy is white.

The words are next to another big sign, which says Obamacare gives you a headache and other ailments, on the chain-link fence of Bursey's Auto.

The full text of the sign says, "If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you weren't a racist, you'd better vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you're not an idiot!"

The sign had me. I pulled over, said I was with the newspaper, and asked to speak to the owner of the shop and sign, because surely this sign was a story.

"My name is Reggie Bursey and I paid for that sign, so I guess you talk to me," he said.

Co-owner Reggie Bursey, who calls himself "a proud conservative," put up the sign after he paid for it to be painted with the money he earns as a small businessman selling and fixing cars. Anybody who puts up a sign like this, and stops what he is doing to talk about why, is all right by me, even if the sign makes no sense.

Bursey sure seems like a decent guy, and he works hard for his money certainly. Bursey said this economy has hurt him, and to any who will listen, he blames Obama and Democrats.

Obama is "wrong for the country" because his politics and policies are bad, Bursey said, not because of his race.

"He said he was going to transform America, but in two years, we will be lucky to have a country left," Bursey said, talking about federal health care, out-of-control spending and other conservative stances that are used so much.

But why then put up the part about anyone voting for Obama to prove they were not racist?

Bursey, who has had many signs up in the past for Republicans and against John Spratt and other Democrats, said it is to get people to look at the sign, and think.

Think about what? That tens of thousands of York County people, including so many whites, had to prove they are not bigots by voting for Obama? Millions in America?

No, said Bursey, although that's exactly what the sign asks. Bursey said he can't imagine any reason anybody of any color would have voted for Obama before, or will again in 2012. Sounding just like TV and radio people who complain about Obama incessantly, Bursey said, "Anybody opposed to Obama is considered a racist. Don't you watch TV?"

There are plenty of people who don't like Obama who are not racists. But that sign is right there, and horns toot as cars go by, so this sign must mean something.

For Bursey, his problem is Democrats and liberals. Obama the black president is not a problem, he said. Obama the liberal president is.

"Why would they vote for him, if they knew his record in the Senate?" Bursey asked. "I am just asking people if they thought about it."

Bursey said he is not implying that anyone is a racist.

"I am asking if they voted for him, are they happy?" Bursey said.

At least once a day since the sign went up, and often more than that, drivers stop or call the shop about the sign, Bursey said. All but one have said they like the sign, said Bursey.

At the shop Wednesday, a black customer who had bought a car from Bursey, and had service work done by Bursey, said he had no problem with Bursey or the sign.

"This is America!" the guy said. "Freedom of speech."

The guy declined to give his name. Freedom not to speak, I guess.

Glenn McCall is chairman of the York County Republican Party, a big shot on South Carolina and national Republican committees. He votes Republican, and that means he votes against Obama and disagrees with Obama on almost everything.

And yes, McCall is a black man just like Obama.

The sign made McCall laugh because that sign is, to McCall, not why anybody voted for Obama.

McCall said plainly about Bursey's sign: "I do not believe anyone voted for Obama to prove they were not a racist. I just don't believe that."

McCall's counterpart, York County Democratic Party Chairman Richards McRae, is white. He voted for Obama because, "He was the Democratic nominee and the best candidate."

Further, McRae said, almost all Republicans who oppose Obama oppose him because of politics or policy, not because of race. The idea that anyone voted for Obama to prove they were not racist was, and is, floated by some conservatives but has no merit.

"This sign does not add anything to the debate," McRae said.

But the sign is there.

The sign brings up the word racist. Race is the root. The race of the president.

The sign is idiotic, not the people who voted for Obama, said Melvin Poole, president of the Rock Hill NAACP.

"President Obama did not win because he is black; he won because he was the best candidate," Poole said.

York Mayor Eddie Lee, a Democrat and white, said the sign is indicative of a "coarseness" in politics that divides the country. The sign is just plain "partisanship," Lee said.

Yet thousands who drive to and from his city see the sign.

But Lee said the sign is about something else very important, whether anyone agrees with it or not.

"The First Amendment," Lee said. That's the one with free speech in it.

"Free speech," is what the black customer said about the sign. "Free speech" is what McRae the Democrat and McCall the Republican called the sign.

"Free speech" is what Bursey called the sign and what Melvin Poole called the sign and what I call the sign.

Free speech is what makes America great.

Free speech is great when liberals bash conservatives on some networks. It is great when people just like Bursey talk like Bursey, on other networks and all over talk radio, claiming Obama is ruining the country and that some people voted for Obama to prove they were not racist.

Whether from liberals or conservatives, it's almost all nonsense.

But people can turn off the TV or radio. People have to see the sign when driving west on S.C. 161 toward York, or risk crashing into Bursey's fence. Tens of thousands see this sign each week.

The sign got me to stop and talk to him. We didn't agree on much, but we talked about it. We shook hands. He is 53 years old with three kids. He runs a business, and he received no bailout like the banks and car makers got. What money he has, he earned.

Reggie Bursey seems like a hard-working, decent man.

But Bursey didn't win, at least not with me. Free speech trumps all else. Free speech works both ways. Free speech says the sign, with the words "Obama," "racist" and "idiot," might fire people up.

But it solves nothing.