The Weight of Race in the Race

 By David K. Shipler

It will be instructive during this election campaign to watch certain conservative whites try to activate racist attitudes against President Obama without seeming to do so. This will be a challenge, in part because wild exaggeration will be necessary to make Obama into a caricature resembling the ugliest stereotypes of blacks.

Nothing about him fits the malicious images traditionally imposed on African-Americans by American society. He is not stupid, lazy, violent, dirty, criminal, corrupt, or immoral. He is a loving and responsible family man. He does not abuse power or behave arrogantly when he gets it. He does not see through a racial lens, does not remind whites of their guilt, and does not indulge in anti-white polemics. (Being biracial, of course, he is as white as he is black.)