Reply #1: Racism isn't logical. Never has been, never will be.

[Berry Cool]

It's driven by fear, not logic--fear that someone who isn't like you might get or is getting something you want and can't get.

And Islam got scratched off the list of plurality of religious beliefs that some Americans can tolerate on 9/11--again, driven by FEAR, not logic.

You might ask your mother: If this book is so truthful, how come the author couldn't even get Bernardine Dohrn's first name right?

Sadly, she sounds like a person who learned her racism at a very young age from people SHE could not believe could possibly be wrong because of how much she had come to respect them. Lucky thing you broke the cycle.

I don't think it's possible to break an illogical thing like racism with logic. It's actually more effective to fight emotion with emotion. Barack and Michelle coming over to her house for an evening and talking with her and showing her what they're really like would probably be more effective than 100 of your logical arguments. Since I doubt that's going to happen, though, you might want to try to get her to watch that half-hour he's buying on TV. At least try to get her to watch. She may be tempted to dismiss it as propaganda, but you never know--some little piece of it may reach out and grab her and make her think: "Hmm. Really?" And maybe, just maybe, it'll put a chink in that armor of racism and maybe that hole can be made to grow until she breaks free of it completely.