Anyone who thought that racist hatred (based on color, ethnicity, or whatever) was buried last week when they laid George "Standing-In-The-Schoolhouse-Door" Wallace to rest in Montgomery is sorely mistaken.

(Admittedly, Wallace later saw the light, but the venom he spewed before he was converted continues to infect the body politic.)

Racism is alive and well, and one needs only to look at the current campaigns in Georgia to see that the eloquently stated "dream" of judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, is still a false hope.

For instance, consider the case of the Georgia state Senate's president pro tempore, Democrat-turned-Republican Sonny Perdue.

Perdue knows his chances of retaining his post as the second highest officer of the Senate after the lieutenant governor are slim to none unless the GOP wins a majority of the membership of that body.

Consequently, he is trying to help some candidates in his new party win the seats they are seeking in this fall's election and he has become the chief architect of an advertising campaign on their behalf which is... how shall we say this... blatantly racist.

The ads Perdue is designing will be used statewide, he says, but, somehow, they have only found their way so far to the campaigns in districts that have a Democratic incumbent and are heavily white, fairly conservative and voted for Bob Dole over Bill Clinton in 1996.

The ads are not even subtle: They have a huge picture of Senate majority leader Charles Walker of Augusta, with the skin tone of this already dark-skinned African-American darkened further and the message to the effect that the first vote to be cast by the Democratic incumbent will be to re-elect him to his post as party head.

The rest of the text will point out how Walker and the Democratic incumbent are just "too liberal for Georgia." Unfortunately, there are a goodly number of unrepentant racists out there who will be swayed by this argument.

Then, there are those two members of the Zell Miller Administration both of whom are black who are trailing in their bids for state attorney general and state labor commissioner, mainly because of their color.

Attorney General Thurbert Baker served as Miller's legislative floor leader in the House, championing such issues as welfare reform and abolishing parole for violent criminals.

Indeed, some observers expect him to turn out to be more judicially conservative than U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, if he ever gets the chance.

Then, there is former state welfare director Michael Thurmond, who actually implemented much of the welfare reform package.

He is trailing in the polls behind John Frank Collins, a perennial canidate who has run as a Republican, a Democrat and an Independent for numerous officers, never winning any.

Don't think the Democrats are above such tactics, either.

The worst, and certainly the most pointed, ethnic slurs are being levelled at Mitch Skandalakis, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, by his Democratic opponent, Mark Taylor.

Skandalakis is the heir to a proud name in Georgia Politics: His father was former chairman of the Board of Regents and his cousin is a prominent district attorney. For the record, this obviously Greek-American has been called Mitch since he was a youth.

But now Taylor, who was the victim of a particularly dirty run-off campaign himself, has taken to calling him by the name with which he was baptised Demetrious Skandalakis and is making strong implications during his stump speeches that folks really don't want to vote for someone who is obviously a foreigner.

Hate is a poison in our political system, whether it is aimed at blacks or ethnic groups or even liberals. It is virulent and it is detestable.

Perhaps someday we will be a society where men and women really do have equal opportunity to acheive on merit and not fall victim to some unseemly attack based on characteristics over which they had no control.