Politicians sometimes subtly draw on racial or ethnic anxiety to draw in voters. It's nothing new; the Know-Nothings made a platform out of it in the mid-1800s.

The subject of race and politics briefly came up at a conference I attended last week. The conference focused on structural equality, a term for the lack of policies, laws, institutions, and cultural perceptions that favor whites over people of color. The point of the conference was to start a productive dialogue on these issues and to try to address them.

Politics has its own particular set of problems. For one thing, minorities are underrepresented in positions of power, including elected office. But the counterproductive political dialogue on race is another. Instead of speaking in terms of equality and opportunity, politicians often turn to perceived threats.

Consider the high-profile example of the Manhattan Islamic center and mosque. Opponents don't claim that all Muslims are terrorists or anything of the like. But their statements play right into public fears and anxiety about Islam.

Another egregious example from recent years was the Republican National Committee ad against former Congress member Harold Ford: the ad with the young, sexualized white woman who says she met Ford at a Playboy party. She closes out the ad with a breathy "Harold, call me."

John A. Powell, executive director of Ohio State University's Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, was one of the speakers at last week's conference. He used the Ford ad as an example of a way politicians exploit racial anxiety, often to their own benefit.  He also used the example of Ronald Regan's non-existent welfare queen.

Right now conservatives, especially some of the louder voices like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, are leading the national discussion on race, he said.

"The Tea Pary [movement], from my perspective, does a lot of things to stoke racial anxiety," Powell said.

It's unlikely that politicians will abandon this sort of rhetoric any time soon. That leaves it up to voters, who need to take a critical look at what candidates and elected officials say and hold them accountable.