Op-Ed Columns

It is passing strange that after months and months of campaigning Barack Obama didn't become really and truly black until March 13. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are yet to become black.

I know, I know, all three were born African American and they will keep the same DNA for the rest of their lives; it's just that we didn't think of them first as black. We thought of them first in terms of their title and occupation.

Obama, too, until March 13, when his former preacher, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, allowed pent-up rage and resentment to explode in his famous rant you've heard so many times it doesn't bear repeating.

Try this test. What are the first things you think of when these names are spoken: Colin Powell, soldier, statesman, but soldier first, general; Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, smart, pretty, talented pianist; Barack Obama, before March, a rookie senator from Illinois, a talented speaker whose presidential campaign has caught fire.

Most people who do not suffer from demented twists in their soul see people in the context with which they were introduced: singer, soldier, athlete, politician, protester.

Of course, there is an iconography of black leadership such as Dr. Martin Luther King, U.S. Rep. John Lewis and Ambassador Andrew Young who transcend race. We see them as leaders of a moral crusade.

As the decades passed, the civil rights movement passed into history and the moral edge of the movement lost its bite. Dr. King's vehicle, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, lost its way and began to bog down in trivialities. A moral crusade had become boring, merely boring.

As the great language, which propelled a great cause, dried as ink on the pages of a history book, organized black groups began to be seen as special pleaders, no different than labor unions or chambers of commerce.

Their spokesmen, such as Jesse Jackson, seemed to emerge as regularly and ineffectually as coo-coo clocks. Lately, Al Sharpton has taken up Jackson's role, erupting tiresomely as the angry black jack in the box.

Neither Colin Powell, nor Condoleezza Rice, nor Barack Obama came to the nation's attention associated with a protest movement or as a special pleader for any group or cause, except that of the United States of America.

Obama caught the attention of Democratic leaders looking for talent as the prestigious editor of the Harvard Law Review, who passed up a six- or seven-figure law practice for community organizing and teaching constitutional law. In the combination, political recruiters saw a real comer.

He was introduced to a national audience as the Senate nominee from Illinois who gave a riveting speech at the 2004 Democratic convention decrying partisan divisions into red and blue states, reminding us of our motto, "e pluribus unum," out of many one.

His campaign quickly became a movement, aligning Obama in speeches to vast audiences with language of historic immediacy, "our moment is now, let's change America," aligning himself with popular disgust at paralyzing partisanship and against an unpopular, far-too costly war.

We did not see him at first in racial terms, just as a candidate who was saying what was on our mind, who was against the things we were against — for most of the country.

Then came Wright, clothed in the wrath of black liberation theology. Trinity United Church of Christ, Wright's church, Obama's church, was not a church where most Christians would feel comfortable in the pews.

Obama's speech separating himself from Wright's language was well received by national commentators but not by Alabamians, if an unscientific poll on this paper's Web site can be believed.

We see Obama a little differently now, and he has some convincing to do. Colin Powell is still the same to us, soldier and statesman, who in 1992 could have beaten both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had he run.

Powell, of course, is aware of his roots and is "terribly excited, I'm impressed, and I'm happy for Barack … We should see Barack as a candidate for president who happens to be black, and not a black candidate for president."

Secretary Powell is counting on two indisputable facts: we as a society aren't obsessed with race, and attitudes have changed.

The glue that held the old, segregated civilization together wasn't primarily racial; stability today, as then, comes from a great quilt of instincts and experiences: the sameness of everyday life, workaday rituals, habits of civility, conformity to the norm, ambivalence, indifference, resignation.

"So he's black, so what? My life isn't going to change all that much whoever is president."

It is certainly true that attitudes are changing.

When I graduated from the University of Alabama in 1959, 72 percent of Southerners objected to any school integration. In 1969, only 21 percent objected to sending their children to a school with (some) blacks.

Race means nothing to the young graduate students, interns and reporters who pass through our paper, and a recent Post-ABC poll showed that nearly nine of 10 whites are comfortable with having a black as president.

If Sen. Obama identifies him-self with the lives, predicaments and hopes of average voters, he could be our next president. Then, like Colin Powell, we'll see him not as black but as president of the United States of America.