He is Barack Obama and she is Hillary Clinton. Vote for the individuals - judge their own electability, experience, judgment, vision. Whatever happens, one symbolic group milestone will be passed by this year's Dem nominee.

Seriously? Another navel-gazer about Barack Obama's melanin levels? Hannaham, brother, Super Tuesday is... this Tuesday. Write about something else. Anything else. We know Barack Obama's ancestry. Tell us about his economic policy proposals, or his endorsements, or his fundraising acumen... Anything. Else.

That we still think in those terms. Is he black? Who cares. He's articulate, funny, straight-forward, intelligent, and a fine man.

Ultimately, his growing frankness about his mixed-race heritage

blah blah blah standard Salon blah blah blah

This article almost surpasses Walsh for contradictions and brazen untruths. Read his speeches from way back, interviews, and all. Nothing is new under the Kansas sun.

How about we judge Obama by the content of character?

How about an article on Clinton's mom's racial characteristics for a change? I hear she was a WHITE woman.

Navel-gazing, indeed.

How about an article about Obama's effectiveness in his previous political positions? How good is he at building coalitions? How tough and successful has he been at putting important, functional, bi-partisan legislation into law? What about his foreign policy experience and liklihood of success? What kind of Cabinet would he put together? Based on his career to date, how sleazy is he likely to be in office? How connected is he in Washington? What important Republicans already like and/or respect him?

I'm hearing a lot about charisma, communication, new directions, and fascination about his genetic makeup. I'm not hearing much about his abilities to put together a functioning team to get things done.

I don't get to "pick" what Mr. Obama's racial identification is. I sometimes feel sorry for the man. Here's a guy who spent his life coming to terms to define himself, and now Wolf Blitzer and Steve Krofft from 60 MINUTES -- two of the whitest guys in America -- get to ask him all this crap all over again.

I like that Mr. Obama has a diverse background, like a growing number of Americans. I like that he's lived outside the United States; I think it gives you a chance to really think about being American and what that means.

But could everybody just back the hell off him about his race?

I have an idea. Has anyone at Salon thought about writing an article on Obama's race?

Just a thought. It seems undercovered.

Obama's color is really about our native-born nuttiness on the subject of racial origins. Barack Obama can't escape being "white" or "black" or both or whatever -- anymore than he can escape being extremely bright, articulate and highly educated. This latter three descriptors also get him into trouble with a lot of people who are deeply suspicious of education and a worldliness.

These problems are ours, not his. The way out of them is to get over the little mental illness we (we blacks and we whites) were born to along with our citizenship -- the illness which makes us see race and class before we see almost anything else about a person. To stop doing this would be like getting out a prison we've built for ourselves. Maybe one of the reasons people (white and black) are so "hopeful" and "joyful" about the possibility of Barack Obama's leadership is the recognition that he may help us walk out of this jail.

While part of me wants to agree with earlier posters who want to dismiss this entire line of discussion, I gotta say that African-Americans have always been the slave, the slaveowner, the European immigrant, the Native American. Always. Its not as if the Black folks you see walking around today are all straight from the Congo, sporting some supposed genetic purity. Each and every African-American could call himself "mixed" or bi- and tri-racial without a moment's hesitation, and fully clothed in genetic truth. Hell, we could simply call ourselves Americans, pointing to the folks in our individual family histories who came here on slave ships, on packet steamers, or on foot via the Bering land bridge, and not bat a single brown eye.

As a cultural matter, what largely defines African Americans as "Black" is a still-enforced separation from "whiteness," and its priveleges. Hence, see the way Middle Eastern folks, post-9/11, became "sand niggers." Even better, see the journey rhat Sikhs, South Asians, became Arabs-by-swarth-only.

Perhaps that is why Senator Obama identifies as a Black man; not as a "rejection" of his mother, but as a recognition of his "walking down the street" reality.

Peculiar, though: if Senator Obama was instead Busdriver Obama, this discussion of his "hidden" inner (and therefore, more "real," perhaps even the better part of him?) "whiteness" would be preposterous. But he is the Senator from Illinois and perhaps the next President, so there's this strange reversal of the single-drop rule, again brought into the service of maintaining some sense of white superiority.

I'm a black man (or, a triracial American). I didn't vote for Al Sharpton. If the republican ticket includes J.C. Watts, i won't be caught up in some existential funk and vote for that ticket just because some black dude is involved.

But, clearly, some segment of Senator Clinton's supporters support her simply because of her gender. (And before someone types, "SOUTH CAROLINA," Al Sharpton didn't win there in 2004, not by any stretch, and Clinton was beating Obama among Blacks by wide margins until about a month ago.) I suspect that all of this obsession about Senator Obama's racial specifics is merely identity politics by tranference.

"Maybe the country will be so flummoxed that we'll just have to call him a man."

Well, in the end that's all he really is: nothin' but a man.

Let's make something clear. Bill Clinton wasn't criticized for calling Obama the black candidate. He wanted to marginalize Obama's accomplishments and diminish his appeal to non-black voters. Clinton was attempting to draw parallels between Obama and candidates whose were perceived to be singularly interested in advancing an imagined African American agenda. It was a transparent message to white, asian and hispanic voters who may not be comfortable with a president who is "too black," the way that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are perceived to be.

We have a lot of work to do in this country to continue to acknowledge and repair the effects of nearly 300 years of systemic racism; but the fact that Clinton's comments were met with widespread criticism and derision is a good sign.

I grew up biracial (black and African mother, white father) in the US in the 80's and 90's. I remember when being biracial was exotic and bizarre. People (both black and white) were shocked and threatened that I had white relatives, that I listened to "white" music and that I sometimes had crushes on white boys. I feel like I've come to terms over the last 20 years with constructing a self identity as both black and bi-racial, an identity that, at times, has been more about how people perceived me than how I actually saw myself.

I now work with high school students and I am impressed with how comfortable they are with leaving behind outdated notions of race and culture. I think part of the reason why Obama is overwhelmingly popular with high school and college students is that he represents the complex reality of race in America today. His talk about change goes beyond the kind of meaningless rhetoric about another Clinton white house. He literally is the change in racial, cultural and social politics that many young people are living everyday. He represents moving away from tired and limited racial definitions, definitions that some writers and older generations of Americans can't seem to get past.