The groundbreaking series here on the MuscleHeadRevolution continues...
I find the analysis of the Los Angeles' Times' Gregory Rodriguez to be somewhat on point. (And funny enough it points to one of my original five reasons why Obama will win - energized blacks.) If Barack Obama is going to light a fire with enough flame to bring about midwestern whites, and urban blacks - then fundamental to his ability to do so is to redefine across the entire spectrum what the debate about race looks like.
That's where Gregor Rodriquez gets it right:
Barack Obama does not remind Americans of the racial divide or of the chains that first created it. Instead, he points to an alternative history that Americans have never been able to achieve. "Symbolically, Obama's parentage is the founding couple that America never accepted," said Werner Sollors, who teaches African American literature at Harvard.
And even more conservative or at least - honest - black writers in America concur. Stanley Crouch of the New York Daily News putting it this way:
WE KNOW this: Barack Obama is a rising star. He's a powerful speaker and a gifted writer. He is the only African American serving in the U.S. Senate. But is he black?
In other words because he does not remind us of America's greatest sin - when we simply look at him, then there is much about that centuries-long debate about race that seems to be no longer necessary to mention.