I'm guessing you're white. From the white perspective, Jackie Robinson, a man who wouldn't stand up to people calling him n*****, who chose to be the only black man in an all white league, rather than begin an integrated league to challenge the status quo, seems like the perfect choice.

There is another persective that sees such choices as a never ending capitulation that has the opposite of the intended effect. No baseball isn't racist--they let Jackie Robinson in. The republicans aren't racist--look at Condoleeza and Colin Powell. The music industry isn't racist--look at all the hip hop stars. Dog the bounty hunter isn't racist--he knows black people. Obviously, there is no problem with race in this country. Isn't Barack Obama cleaning up as the democratic candidate?

However, I would remind you that Obama was the third black senator in the history of this country, almost a century and a half after the end of slavery. And probably will be for a while to come. Its about time we started having honest conversations about race, rather than dancing around them.

I'm not talking about Jackie Robinson or Barack Obama. My point was where did these people come from, and who put them there.

I think its odd that you both claim that I can't "know" something. Houngan claims I don't "know" what Michelle Obama was saying, Pedinska claims that I can't know the reason why Obama was chosen as the Democratic candidate.

There is something out there called reasoning. In the case of Michelle Obama, it seems pretty clear what she meant. Barring any other contextualization that appeared before the camera started rolling, I can't imagine she meant anything different. And if she did, she--a lawyer and community liason for a major corporation--needs to take some public speaking lessons. No, I don't "know", but I'm also not stupid. My point with Jackie Robinson (who I didn't bring up in the first place) was that out of the box thinking would have served the nation better than simply integrating one black man into an all white organization. The true history of integration is pretty anemic, and it doesn't seem to have made a deep enough impact even a half century later. An alternative would have been to create new, fully integrated structures from the get go, rather than forcibly integrate racist institutions as a makeover.

As for Pedinska, the last black candidate for President that got as far as the primaries was Jesse Jackson, when I was a teenager. With a lifetime of accomplishments, Jackson was considered a fringe candidate by both the media and his own party, even though the civil rights act had passed nearly twenty years earlier. There are two noteable differences between Obama and Jackson. Jackson had a substantial record which was subject to intense scrutiny, derision and disinformation. And Jackson is an African-American descendant of slaves.

You're right I am not clairevoyant, that's why I have to think.

Now I feel dumb for even engaging in this conversation with you. If my memory serves, you like to insult people as being ignorant about the situation, and then you claim to not have time to offer the information that seems to make you an expert. Forgive me, Salon, for wasting the electronic space in these replies.

It was a minor, minor (really minor) point in my argument that you seem to have focused on to the exclusion of everything else I wrote of. I don't even like baseball. Let's end this thread and give everyone a break.

I simply don't understand why its not possible to support a candidate without worshipping him/her, or that believing they are qualitatively and morally superior to the others. I am supporting Obama because he ticks more boxes than the others, but I'm not that impressed by him to be honest. And yes, though I am sorry someone accused you of being racist, I still want the conversation to be about race. And again, I'll say, that Obama is only the third black senator in the history of the US (outside of the reconstruction period, when there was two). We have accepted deep inequalities as the norm, and that is why Obama is the only viable non-white candidate.