He’s talking about press reports specifically, so either he means the media’s racist or its sources are. Which isn’t helpful to anyone — except him, of course, insofar as it guarantees that no RNC members will dare try to oust him before his term is up. So don’t even bother with the “Steele must go” stuff in the comments. He’s here to stay. Racists.

Shut up, he explained:

Steele acknowledges that at times he has a tendency to take things too far. “And I get checked on that, just as when I was a young boy and I pushed the envelope too far and my Mama was there to check me.”

But there’s an edge to his voice when he talks about a double standard that he believes has been applied by his critics, and he posits racism as the cause: “I don’t see stories about the internal operations of the DNC that I see about this operation. Why? Is it because Michael Steele is the chairman, or is it because a black man is chairman?”

Just spitballing here, but maybe the media focuses on internal ops at the RNC to gauge whether he’s managing the committee’s treasury well enough to justify his dopey, damaging, self-defeating soundbites. Fundraising has been good, but the RNC started this year with just $8.7 million in the bank, $14 million less than it started 2009 with and the lowest total they’ve had heading into an election year this decade. Good enough to make the occasional “my critics are racists” bon mot tolerable? Hmmm. Exit question: For all the grief we give O-bots for playing racial politics in defense of their guy, has Obama himself played it as much as Steele has? Remember, Steele claimed that some white Republicans fear him and sat passively while D.L. Hughley said the convention looked like a Nazi rally. In fact, he once played the race card on Obama himself in questioning why the White House was pressuring David Paterson to retire. Has The One hit this theme as much as he has?