“Obama would make a great black President.”

As long as we keep making judgments based off of race, we don’t have to ask ourselves if racism still exists.  The fact that racism exists is made obvious in the way we frame our discussions.  As long as there are perfectly coiffed blond women on network news asking breathlessly if Obama’s race will be a factor in people’s consideration of him, it’s being made a factor.

If race isn’t a factor, it doesn’t need to be mentioned.

If race is mentioned, it’s a factor.

The inspiring thing is that more and more, Obama’s support seems to cross race and class lines and defy projection- except for the fact that he seems to always carry the young voters.  So it must be true that people are looking at this other than in terms of his race, isn’t it?  I know that I myself got involved in Obama’s website early on more out of curiosity than because I necessarily support him.  I was intrigued by his approach to social networking in grassroots efforts, and I felt hopeful that he seemed to be more focused on true patriotism than American superiority.

Yet…  Every once in a while I ask myself if I care that he is black.  I find myself saying things like, “he’d be a great 1st black President,” and I have to put my hand over my mouth.  We aren’t there yet, are we?  As a country we are still painfully aware of our history.  The white upper middle class still feels this quiet guilt, as if we are silently aware that we’ve gotten this society on the backs of the less privileged.

The question then becomes, do we let our fear of wrong motivations obscure the true good that is in the candidates?  Can we force ourselves to evaluate based solely off of qualifications?  Can we judge Hillary Clinton based off of things other than her vagina?  Can we erase the word black from all of our sentences summing up Barack Obama?  Can we stop shorting Edwards because he’s white and blond and mainly has the fault of not being a woman or black?

Or is it too late?  The media has framed the democratic primaries, skewing them so radically that the majority of Americans may not be able to work past the buzz to remember that the next election needs to be about foreign policy and solid economical standards.