First it was Fox News Channel host Neil Cavuto, then Minnesota's Rep. Michelle Bachmann. Now the always obnoxious Anne Coulter is joining the chorus with a column entitled, "They Gave Your Mortgage to a Less Qualified Minority".

It is important to label these attacks for what they are - the racist scapegoating of the credit crisis on racial and ethnic minorities. Such hatred and intolerance has no place in the current national dialog and will only distract us from the pressing problems at hand. Kudos to folks like Tom Edsall who are calling this trend what it is - bigotry.

Update 10/7/08: RaceWire has a post up on this subject - "Racist Conservatives Wrong About Immigrants and Mortgage Crisis".

Update 10/9/08: Danile Gross has a great post with even more examples on Slate.com entitled "Subprime Suspects", and long-time fair housing advocate Greg Squires highlights this trend in his post "Scapegoating Blacks for the Economic Crisis" at Shelterforce's Rooflines blog.