Obama on race

Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote this on the issue of race, which was heavily trumpeted around the SC debate:

In his second best seller, "The Audacity of Hope," Obama wrote about a lesson he learned while sitting in the Illinois Senate with a white Democratic legislator as they watched a black colleague, whom Obama called "John Doe," deliver a floor speech on why eliminating a certain program was racist. "You know what the problem is with John," the white senator asked Obama. "Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white."

As an African-American, I understand how that white senator must have felt. Sometimes I hear white people -- certain demagogic talk radio hosts come to mind -- who make me feel more "black."

Obama observed that it's not easy for a black politician to strike the right tone between anger and not-angry-enough. But, rightly or wrongly, "white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America." Every time news people talk about "the black vote," for example, I suspect it makes somebody feel "more white." But race is so deeply ingrained in American customs, traditions and memory that it's hard to cover politics without talking about it.