A reader emails his thoughts on Barack Obama and the race debate:

Here has been my concern about Barack Obama’s candidacy, which rests on his promise to not throw his race (and the history of American racism) in the faces of white voters: it is now okay to talk about race because Obama says it’s okay to talk about race. He says we’re past it. This new, frank conversation about race has destroyed political correctness. The AP not only refers to a white person as a “white person” or a black person as a “black person,” which was unheard of five years ago, but to African Americans as “blacks.” Blacks?!

Obama’s candidacy, which was supposed to sail above the history of American racism, has opened the door to a vocabulary that most Americans - or at least most American pundits - are too immature to handle. Sean Hannity can now refer to “blacks,” because Obama says it’s okay. And Hillary Clinton can brag about her support amongst “whites,” <http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/08/clinton-touts-support-from-white-americans/> because the media is already doing it. I do not like where this thing is heading.


The fact that the Democrats, cosmopolitan liberals that they are, have spoken clumsily and bluntly about race during this primary has made it okay for Republicans to do the same in the general election. George W. Bush has never uttered anything as bigoted as the Clintons’ comments about ‘typically black’ support for Obama and ’solidly white’ support for Hillary. In short, the Democrats (and, yes, the liberal media) have unsheathed rhetoric that can sink Obama’s presidential bid; Republicans (and, yes, the conservative media) never could have done the same, as the public has been ready for years (Kanye West) to successfully paint the Right as racist bigots. But make no mistake, now that the our new post-racial racist rhetoric is loosed, GOP pundits are going to use that rhetoric to get their man in the White House. If not for the Clintons, the certain use of racial innuendo by conservative hacks would have been deemed a “New Southern Strategy.” Now, it’s merely a redeployed “Liberal Clinton Strategy,” which was used only months prior by a man once called America’s first black president.

If Obama loses this general election, it will be because of ‘talk of race.’ A conversation about race was supposed to be liberating for Americans, especially for our generation (all the way back to Generation X), because we are ready to be beyond it. In reality, I believe this new conversation about race is going to allow every pundit to say what he has always wanted to say and every Baby Boomer to hear what she has always wanted to hear. If Obama does not win the Presidency, he will be sunk by tacitly racist speech that will persist long past November. As the person whose candidacy opened the door to a new candor about race - which has revealed a widespread, cavalier, politically moderate racist streak in America - it will be up to Senator Obama, the runner-up, to denounce this turn of events, at which point he will be labeled an angry black man and we will be back to square one.


Obama has got to win the Presidency, in order to tell America’s new old racists to shove it. And so it is, I might find myself voting for Barack Obama, not because his policy views (which are awful), but because of his race and how the Office of the President allows him to use his skin color to put an end to this bull@#$.

Indeed, I think there’s plenty of truth in this. I think in some ways the Obama campaign is forcing us to have a debate we don’t really want. If that debate doesn’t go smoothly and if Obama loses in November, it could set race relations back decades.

I’ve long thought the only real positive out of an Obama presidency would be to bring some racial reconciliation to the country. But the flip side of that is the risk that the campaign represents.

While the reader points out the real potential for a discussion of race to mask and justify racist tendencies in America’s white population. There is also the risk that fair and honest criticism of Obama will be interpreted as racist by the Black community, further widening the tension.

Language and meaning are very slippery things. And trying to change them from the top down is a risky business. For all the hope Obama professes to stand for, one can’t help feeling the peril of pushing this country into uncharted territory. The hope is that once there, we’ll want to keeping moving forward instead of reversing sail.