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Would President Obama Listen To Candidate Obama?

Barack Obama gave a stirring victory speech in South Carolina last night. If he is elected, I hope President Obama remembers, and acts on, what Candidate Obama said.

Candidate Obama rejected

the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face....

A politics that tells us that we have to think, act, and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us.

If this rejection means anything, it means that individuals should not be forced to occupy racial cubby holes, that individuals are in fact individuals and not mere microcosmic examples of their race.

But, Candidate Obama recognizes, we are also more than unrelated individuals.

I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina....

I saw what America is, and I believe in what this country can be.... ? that out of many, we are one.

But if Candidate Obama did not see ?a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina,? why should admissions officers and employers see white applicants or black applicants? Why not just applicants, judged by the same standards?

Indeed, if President Obama were to continue the same old racial preference policies of treating people differently based on their race or ethnicity he would in fact be continuing ?the same old tactics that divide and distract us? that Candidate Obama so persuasively rejects.

Full post as published by Discriminations on January 27, 2008 (boomark / email).