Michael Henderson suggests

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Obama & the new black politics

Thursday, 7th August 2008

“In the context of what I do for a living, I’ve not figured out a black or white way to fill a pothole..." A quote from one of the new wave of hard-headed, "post-black" politicos profiled in Matt Bai's lengthy NYT magazine piece on how the rise of Barack Obama has transformed the landscape. One of Obama's aides may have a name straight out of a Sinclair Lewis novel - Cornell Belcher (honestly) - but he neatly sums up the difference between the old and new guard:

“Barack Obama is the sum of their struggle. He’s the sum of their tears, their fights, their marching, their pain. This opportunity is the sum of that. But it’s like watching something that you’ve been working on all your life sort of come together right before your eyes, and you can’t see it,” Belcher said. “It’s like you’ve been building the Great Wall of China, and you finally put that last stone in. And you can’t see it. You just can’t see the enormity of it.”

Well worth a read. It looks as if the embattled John McWhorter - a hate figure to many since he published "Losing the Race" - may have the last word after all.