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This year’s democratic primary provides another example of history being conflated with mythology. For the past three months pundits have been homing in on “white male voters” as the “deciding” or “prize” voting block that will determine the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Fearing that white men might otherwise be neglected in this “historic campaign” between an African American and a [white] woman, political pundits are always sure to remind us that “white men” will decide this election—which of course is a historic first in this nation’s history. And in crafting this “white male” voter, pundits have created a figure more characteristic of a Harry Potter tale than a political contest.

For decades, advocates for racial equality have been fighting the tides of the new American movement for colorblindness, the idea that if we don’t talk about race, somehow racism and the inequalities which it spawns will magically disappear. The simple and unavoidable truth is that we are always talking about race even when we’re not, and usually it’s a destructive conversation.

Case in point, Barack Obama. As much as he’s tried to avoid talking about it, Obama has been unable to duck the, shall we say commentary on his ethnic background and the color of his skin. At every turn, politicians and pundits have reminded Obama and America of his blackness.

Northwest Federation of Community Organizations (NWFCO) responds to President Bush's SCHIP veto.

Yesterday was a day of reckoning, sort of. The House didn't override the
President’s SCHIP veto, but an important lesson or
two will come out of the fight.

Early on, President Bush tipped his hand by vowing to veto, the kids be
damned. He put the private health insurance industry first and was pretty
transparent about it. That gave SCHIP supporters bait for proclaiming his
hard-heartedness – not that we could ever match the viciousness of the
right.

We haven’t been quite as vocal about everything at stake in SCHIP, though.

Pardon me for being a little behind but I had such a mess of reactions to this bit of news that I simply had to share it. Did y'all hear about Robert Novak's comment on how the Democrats move to run a woman or black man for President gives Republicans hope? I assume you all read the news more than me, but in case you missed it:

"During all-white-male Meet the Press panel, Novak claimed "woman or an African-American" Dem nominee would give GOP "hope".

"During a panel discussion of the 2008 presidential election on the July 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, syndicated columnist Robert Novak asserted: "Republicans are very pessimistic about 2008. When you talk to them off the record, they don't see how they can win this thing. And then they think for a minute, and only the Democratic Party, with everything in their favor, would say that, 'OK, this is the year either to have a woman or an African-American to break precedent, to do things the country has never done before.' And it gives the Republicans hope."

Neither host Tim Russert nor any of Novak's fellow panelists, Bloomberg News Washington managing editor Al Hunt, Republican strategist Mike Murphy, and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum -- all of whom are, like Novak, white men -- commented on or challenged Novak's assertion. As Media Matters for America documented, the four Sunday-morning talk programs on the broadcast networks, Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.

"A breakdown of the guests on Meet the Press from 2005 to 2006 shows that 76 percent of the guests on the program were white men.

Read July 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press here.

So...I read this as I'm catching up on my post US Social Forum emails and the message reverberating in my mind is the still radical suggestion that another world is possible and another U.S. is necessary. The message is compounded by bits of proof that people can and do behave differently when given the space to deeply engage with each other and liberating information - the type of information that shifts perspective in a way that makes one realize that if one new perspective is possible, perhaps another, and another, perhaps a 360 degree perspective is even possible, and with that sort of vision perhaps any dream could be realized.