"But Obama is not an ordinary black man."

You might want to rethink that line.

If you would, and if you can without sounding like a complete racist, please enlighten me as to what an "ordinary black man" is.

you sure took a lot from that ;)

"Black" is not really a race. The term "black" is used in the US to describe people who are mostly of mixed African and European heritage--at least partly African.

Obama, of course, is a little different from the "black" Americans who are descendants of African slaves, because his dad was an African from Africa, so he is a first generation mixture.

Not that it really matters.

Thank you for providing the basic understandings that Gary Kamiya's article didn't seem to grasp. Between the gleeful blindness to that and the "Barack is not an ordinary black man" line, I was really about to lose my shit. How can this "painful but necessary exploration of the real meaning of race in America" happen when it's initiated by such dunderheaded articles?

Gary Kamiya -

Don't think so much about group membership. Obama belongs to several groups, judge him as an individual. Salon needs to forget about trying to divine how certain ethnic, gender, political groups view Obama or McCain. Instead, let's give both candidates in the general election a full, open head start. Unless group bias must win out, Salon needs to focus on something different. The Dem nominee would do better if websites like yours moved from groupthink to individual candidates.

"...whites are comfortable with black people, but much more uneasy about certain aspects of black culture, those associated with the so-called black underclass. Being black is OK; acting black, in certain ways, isn't."

The fact that "acting black" is essentially shorthand for "certain aspects of black culture associated with the so-called black underclass" (i.e. crime, violence, black nationalism) more or less sums up "the real meaning of race in America" right there.

I see change happening. While there are still terrible divisions, born of slow struggle to change, there is a new class of young urbanite, multi-racial, non-traditional family, intelligent Gen-Y er's who are not elite--they are smart and they are caring about their world. THESE are ones who have regularly been exposed, since they were school children, to families with only one parent, or two parents of the same sex, or who travelled between "blended" families every week. THESE are the ones who saw their friends' parents be black AND white, Latino AND Asian--all mixed up together with beautiful genetic combinations as a result.

It isn't easy or commonplace everywhere--not yet--but it's bigger every year. And THESE are the ones who saw Barack Obama without really looking at his race--instead picking up on his MESSAGE!

Can we of an older generation try, really hard, to remember that? I'm not suggesting race is unimportant--I grew up in St. Louis in the 60's, and clearly, we have many miles to go on the road of justice in that regard. But I really don't think Obama energized so many young voters because of his race--I think he energized them because of his HOPE, because he does not represent the worst of Washington to them, and yes, because he has spent 20 years working for social and racial justice, which many of the WHITE "kids" who voted for him are doing too!

"@ Gary Kamiya

"But Obama is not an ordinary black man."

You might want to rethink that line.

If you would, and if you can without sounding like a

complete racist, please enlighten me as to what

an "ordinary black man" is."

--Patrick Morgan"

I see your point Patrick, but it is close to why I am so enthusiastic about Obama. He represents the best and brightest this country has to offer, not some goof you want to have beer with, or some super rich slimebag or Manchurian Lobbyist.

He's not an ordinary black man, white man, Asian man.... you get my point. He's proven he's extraordinary and its about time this country starts electing extraordinary presidents again instead of these repug slacker idiots before the east coast in Kentucky (my land would be worth a lot more though.).

.... hope this sounds right when I reread it.

...who happens to be black.

Is an ordinary black person anything like a typical white person?

Gary Kamiya always writes intelligently and may have the pole position on the subject of mixed race in the upcoming election campaign.

I would urge him to tackle these thorny issues: Why would Appalachian white men with high school or less education seemingly mistrust Sen. Barack Obama, a black kid who grew up poor, was raised by a single mother and grandparents, but for whom education was valued as a way up and out? But not Hillary Clinton, a white, upper middle class girl who grew up comfortably with an expectation she would earn at least a Master's degree and succeed without a struggle, and who did so? Why would they believe this black candidate would not understand their issues, their lives when many of his circumstances match theirs? Do they mistrust him because he is black; because he became educated and succeeded at it and thus was able to escape poverty and deprivation; because his middle name is Hussein and they know only one other Hussein as an enemy; or because their issues have been pre-framed simplistically and their responses have been reduced to sound bites? Do we really know these citizens, or do we just think we do? Do we know them today or yesterday?

I would like to see Gary tackle the meaning of the phrase that is constantly used to describe---and substantially dismiss---an elusive national sub-section: working class Americans. Could this phrase be derived from an Edwardian-Victorian British conceit of landed gentry who were so wealthy they commanded fleets of servants and serfs attending their residential and estate needs, freeing their daylight hours for reading botany or playing badminton and their evenings for dining and dancing; whereas, those forced to work were relegated to a lower class, whose one's living was not guaranteed by inheritance and for whom charity was invented?

Today in America, those fully utilizing the phrase 'working class' appear to be just as hard-working as those they define as coal miners, truck and taxi drivers and restaurant servers. Hillary Clinton appeared to work harder than the class she said she represented, but from whom she did not emerge.

We all work. So who indeed comprises this mist-shrouded working class? Is it a quantifiable class, or just another outmoded label? I've met taxi drivers with PhDs, truck drivers who read Proust and many restaurant servers are Julliard musicians or actors making ends meet while training for their dreams. Can you lump them into the media caricature of the lunch-bucket carrying, Ford 150 driving, hard hat wearing, country music loving, tenth grade educated, white proud, gay and immigrant hating, beer drinking, Christian Southern or Appalachian coal belt mostly male sub-group? Or is this working class American caricature in need of massive review and updating to include everyone who works and lives in the US---that's everyone, from Barack Obama to Lou Dobbs to George W. Bush to your local supermarket clerk and Wal-Mart greeter? Anyone who gets a paycheck. Even Paris Hilton works, or so she says, so where is the outer boundary of this label? And if we don't know who to include or exclude, then how do we know that Barack Obama has 'a problem' relating to this group?

The sub-text of Obama's candidacy seems to imply that we may be on the verge of dissolving these old labels that define and precede us into The Great Political Room. Those who measure, however, will simply want to replace them to better quantify and qualify us as we, in greater numbers than ever before, exit the polling stations. But with what new labels, the question begs? Will they categorize by consumer goods, or beliefs, education or income level, employment status, hybrid or dino vehicle? Will race, gender and sexual orientation matter or will age and the internet be the great definers, as they already appear to be?

I hope Gary will weigh in on this in future columns. Our measuring sticks seem to be stuck in another century while our real political lives are being lived out invisibly and unheralded on line and very much in the future. This appears to be why hope matters so much...hope that politics will catch up with where we already reside in our cyber-imaginations, leading, refining and asking us to participate in the reality of our better dreams and in our very survival as a species.