I've subcribed to Newsweek for years. I will not renew. I buy a news Mag. for objective reporting,Fineman,Alter and Wolffes love affair with Obama on print and MSNBC has soured me on all of them.They all belong on Fox,come to think of it maybe Fox is more fair and balanced than them
The Race Perplex
Obama, the white vote and a venerable American argument.
May 14, 2008 | Updated: 3:52 p.m. ET May 14, 2008
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I'll never forget a frigid morning in Springfield: Sen. Barack Obama, elegantly Lincolnesque in a long wool coat, launching his presidential candidacy in the shadow of the old Illinois State Capitol. The echoes of history were almost deafening—not just of Abraham Lincoln, who, like Obama, had been a legislator there, but of the argument over slavery and race that Lincoln had joined there.
On that sunny February day in 2007, Obama seemed to radiate uplift and glorious possibility. He was making a statement: that his candidacy would be the exclamation point at the end of our four-century-long argument over the role of African-Americans in our society. By electing a mixed-race man of evident brilliance, moderate mien and welcoming smile, we would finally cease seeing each other through color-coded eyes.
Well, that argument did not end. He and we were naive to think it would. In our country, uniquely based on and blessed by the idea of individual freedom, the most profound argument always this: who is fully a person in the eyes of our society and law? The Constitution enshrines and protects "persons." But who is one and, just as important, who isn't?
In some ways, as the 2008 presidential campaign shows—and the racially lopsided West Virginia results from Tuesday night remind us—we have yet to fully answer the questions.
A century and a half ago, the American Argument over personhood sparked one of the bloodiest disputes any nation has ever had with itself: our Civil War. But the enduring debate also spawned tremendous social progress and constitutional changes, not just for blacks but for women, gays, lesbians and others. The phrase "We the People" has a far broader meaning than our white male Christian Founders imagined.
But now, in the presidential campaign of 2008, the old argument engenders fresh ones. Is Obama's campaign erasing racial consciousness, or raising it? Are voters willing to see a black man not only as an equal, but as commander in chief? If Obama wins, will we finally and forever reach the sunny uplands of tolerance? If he loses, does that mean we are hopelessly mired in kind of racist thinking that still denies full personhood to individuals for no other reason than skin color?
Let me offer some tentative answers to at least the first question.
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