Earlier this week, conservative radio pundit Rush Limbaugh played a terrifying game of racial semantics. He insisted that Barack Obama was not, in fact, African-American, but rather "Arab". Limbaugh mused: "Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood? He's Arab. You know, he's from Africa. He's from Arab parts of Africa. ... [H]e's not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American." Nevermind that Kenya - Obama's fatherland - is hardly an "Arab" part of Africa. Nevermind the implied assertion that it's unacceptable to be Arab. It is frightening that something as straight-forward - and typically American - as Obama's background can be tossed about in Limbaugh's false and malicious racial taxonomy. And it is even more frightening that such an outrage passes without provoking the ire of the mainstream press.
Of course, America's tormented relationship with race has never lurked too far from the surface of the election campaign. The irony is that Obama himself must continue to row through the waters as if there was very little roiling below. Obama's opponents flippantly and indelicately invoke race; Obama must steer clear. As Brent Staples puts it in his excellent and essential editorial in the New York Times,
Obama seems to understand that he is always an utterance away from a statement — or a phrase — that could transform him in a campaign ad from the affable, rational and racially ambiguous candidate into the archetypical angry black man who scares off the white vote. His caution is evident from the way he sifts and searches the language as he speaks, stepping around words that might push him into the danger zone. These maneuvers are often painful to watch. The troubling part is that they are necessary.