By Liam JulianBarack Obama, who apparently believes that the only way to get beyond race is by constantly evoking it, said Tuesday that while “we do not need to recite…the history of racial injustice” it nonetheless festers in just about everything Americans do. Then he recited the history of racial injustice.
Going to church in 2008, Obama noted, is infused with historical, racial meaning. So, too, are scads of other activities, such as going to school: “Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.”