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it had discovered the bone in Obama’s closet that would derail his run for the Presidency, Barack kicked down the door of the closet that holds America’s worse skeletons, its race closet.

So the race closet, stacked to the top with 400 years of skeletons-from the Middle Passage through today’s colorblind racism, is closely guarded by those who know and understand this vile and twisted history. However, this time America started it by trying to radicalize Obama and racialize Obama’s Minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Barack finished it by stating that if you really want to have a conversation about somebody’s racial views - then let’s talk about America’s racial views, in its totality. It was substantive, and it was eloquent.

Let Hillary Clinton call this speech “just empty words” or another “eloquent speech.” And let those who claim Barack ain’t “black enough” hang their hat on this speech while those who try to diss his “too black” pastor realize that Barack is “too black” to allow himself to be separated from his church and his community. It was a historic moment. We can truly say that after this week, “a black man” is running for President. And by most accounts, he’s still the best candidate in the race.

Several themes coalesced over the two-day period. A prominent one was the oft repeated, "Did race trump gender?" Dr. Cynthia Neal-Spence, Associate Professor of Sociology at Spelman College, spoke about the dilemma of the black female. Asking, "Are we as a group more gender conscious or race conscious?" she then suggested "the media coverage had helped black women to choose sides." Despite Obama offering a post-racial approach, she sensed the same "tensions resurfacing that were in place during the suffragette movement." She also saw the media's analyzation as being "racialized."

However, Vojdik said, "Those in the media insisted on gendering her candidacy, taking her from the public sphere to the private construction of her identity as a wife and a mother." This was often accomplished through the use of specific language. She gave as examples the terms, "shrill, emasculating, castrating," with oft used analogies of Hillary as "the hectoring mother," or "the wife as ball-buster." Hillary was not male, but she "had failed as a female." On the other hand, Vojdik saw Sarah Palin as seeking to be elected because she was a woman in the "good wife and mother" mode. Projecting herself as stereotypically feminine, albeit a "pit bull with lipstick," she "appeals to the 80's concept of the superwoman." "But," Vojdik asked, "where are the supports for ordinary women?"

Although feminine for Sarah Palin is an asset, "feminine" attributes in general are considered a negative. "The process of gender," as phrased by Vojdik, is a methodology employed by the Republicans where they "feminize" a male candidate -- to his detriment.

And you know what? It wasn't just about skin color. It was always first and foremost about accepting an identity of racial supremacy. Even the Irish in America were "black" before they were "white." Don't believe it? Look it up.

Wow, no wonder white folks are bitter. Having to carry around all that self-deception willful ignorance all those years. And for what? A lousy seat at the front of the bus and a place at the front of the job queue that are no longer even guaranteed by law!

Once upon a time -- not so very long ago -- there was no such thing as whiteness or the white race, just as there was no such thing as blackness or the black race. Those unscientific distinctions and associated invidious stereotypes had to be invented. It so happens that they were invented by folks who invented their own identity of whiteness to establish their moral superiority to people being held in slavery.

Not so. Mr. Obama's 43% share of the white vote in the general election was actually a tad larger than that of John Kerry in 2004 (41%) or Al Gore in 2000 (42%).

Consider Iowa, with only a miniscule African-American population. The 5% of voters who said race was the most important factor in their choice of whom to vote for backed Mr. Obama 54% to 45%. Or consider Minnesota and Wisconsin, also overwhelmingly white, where Mr. Obama's lead was 18% and 21% respectively among the 5% to 7% of voters who made race their highest priority.

The aggressive federal interference in state and local districting decisions enshrined in the Voting Rights Act should therefore be reconsidered. That statute, adopted in 1965 and strengthened by Congress in the summer of 2006, demands race-driven districting maps to protect black candidates from white competition. That translates into an effort to create black representation proportional to the black population in the jurisdiction

"Polls show that whites and blacks tend to have different views on the amount of racism in the U.S." said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "So it's not surprising that they would have different views on the likelihood of an African-American president."

"A majority of blacks now believe that a solution to the country's racial problems will eventually be found," Holland said. "In every previous poll on this topic dating back to 1993, black respondents had always said that racial problems were a permanent part of the American landscape."

In 2007, about 30 percent of the nation’s 622 black state legislators represented predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001, according to data collected by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington that has kept statistics on black elected officials for nearly 40 years.

“There’s a fair amount of experience out there among white voters now, and that has lessened the fears about black candidates,” said Dr. Hajnal, whose book about white experiences with black mayors, “Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership,” was published last year by Cambridge University Press.

America in flames? Sound familiar? The closing lines of Grine Kuzine are really no different from Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” paraphrase of Irving Berlin’s maudlin patriotic tune God Bless America. As a singer of Grine Kuzine, and as a not-too-distant descendant of her fellow immigrant workers, I do not understand the recent hysteria over the U-Tube posting of an out-of-context video excerpt of one of Wright’s old sermons. Jews and Blacks and even the whitest-of-white Americans have the right — and maybe the obligation — to be enraged at polities and policies that misuse or deceive them or that fail to live up to their potential or rhetoric. The hyperbole of songs and of sermons generates reflection and vents steam and diffuses rage even as it broadcasts it.

Far more interesting and insidious than the slips-of-the-lips of members of Obama’s confessional circles is Hillary Clinton’s decades-long involvement in an oligarchical right-wing prayer breakfast group called The Fellowship, Sound like the stuff of crank conspiracy theories? Writer Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer, a New York University weblog covering religion and the media, has just completed a book on the subject. Will apologies and statements of distancing and denunciation of The Fellowship be forthcoming from the Clinton campaign? I doubt it.

Today, about 25 percent of African Americans are mired in poverty. In many ways, being black and poor is a more desperate and hopeless condition now than it was 40 years ago. For those who managed to enter the middle class, however, most of the old generalizations no longer apply.

On April 4, 1968, it was possible to make the generalization that being black in this country meant being poor; fully 40 percent of black Americans lived below the poverty line, according to census data, with another 20 percent barely keeping their heads above water.

But the gap in wealth, or net worth, is huge, even when you control for education, age, family size and whatever else you want to throw in. Still, African Americans control an estimated $800 billion in purchasing power. If that were translated into gross domestic product, a sovereign "Black America" would be the 15th- or 16th-richest nation on earth.

What do you think of Obama? I’m riding my man Obama. I think he’s a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, “Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, ‘What’s wrong with this brother?’ ” Does this mean you’re down on the Clintons? The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bulls***. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean.