Prometheus 6

Let's face it, change is hard. It can be ugly. It's not about conciliation but confrontation. And what must be confronted is Obama's blackness, not his whiteness or some notion that he transcends race altogether. America should be able and willing to elect a black man to the White House, which might qualify as the biggest sea change -- and no small reason for hope -- in our political history.

We should be permanently retiring the one-drop rule, not by trumpeting a new multiculturalism or a new post-racialism but by acknowledging that it is indeed possible for somebody to be both unequivocally black and representative of other fellow Americans.

See Obama for who he is
He's a successful black man, not a symbol of a post-racial America.
By Erin Aubry Kaplan
February 29, 2008 

The month of February saw one victory after another in the astonishing, historic ascent of Barack Obama as a presidential contender. It seemed like perfect timing to me -- Obama marched steadily toward the ultimate political prize week after week during Black History Month. But that's not an association people seem terribly eager to make.

In fact, the closer Obama gets to representing us all, the more people struggle with the notion of him as a black man -- reflecting in growing detail America's chronic schizophrenia about racial identity.