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The furor over the comments of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Geraldine Ferraro prove that we have not come as far as we think we have on this race issue in this country. It is comfortable to think that slavery is something that happened in America's deep past and that everything is fine now and we are all above all that ugliness at last. The truth is, slavery is still very close to Americans, emotionally and historically.

It is not a matter of centuries that separates American, "white" and "black", from the bad times, but rather a matter of generations. Racism in the US is an open wound that is only just recently beginning to scab over. Any whiff of oxygen, honesty, or emotion brings back all the pain on all sides. The rest of the world knows this about us. We, apparently, still do not.

Both Ferraro and Wright made obvious statements and then were practically lynched by the media for doing so. It is obvious that Obama's race is one of the reasons he is such a popular candidate and one of the reasons he is a candidate at all. What is maybe less obvious is that the other reasons he is a candidate have to do with his personal charisma, his brilliant mind, and the fact that he is willing to go out on a limb and articulate his hopes and dreams for America. These hopes and dreams still resonate with many people. Thank God.

Reverend Wright's sermon also stated the obvious, and gave vent to feelings that LOTS of black people have about America. I personally am a little bit sick of hyper-sensitive white people whose delicate feelings are offended by any expression of black anger. Where were these sensitive souls when Katrina hit New Orleans and George Bush stayed in California for three days playing the guitar to nursing home residents?(Look it up: This is what he was doing, seriously.)

Any black person who watched the news coverage of Katrina and didn't get a tad bit honked off has to be brain dead. White people should share this anger, not get all touchy when someone with dark skin points out the obvious with emotion in his voice. Right now, one out of 9 black men lives in prison. That is an obscene statistic by any measure. Let's get real. We have a problem here, America, and it's not Reverend White or Barack Obama.

While we're on the subject, it always strikes me that the fact that we identify Barack Obama as black at all (and he identifies himself this way too), shows we have "issues" to put it kindly. Obama's mother is white, his father was African. Isn't he just as

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