Although the talk about race in the current presidential election has been a long time coming, it is now here and in plain view. A September 2008 AP/Yahoo poll confirmed what everyone secretly thought: Race is an issue: “If there was no racial prejudice among voters, Sen. Barack Obama would receive about six percentage points more support.”

But let’s do a quick jog through our brief, colorblind past:

When Senator Barack Obama announced his bid for president in February 2007, the media and the Obama camp avoided the race subject like the plague.

Instead, Obama was painted as a real-life manifestation of the “American Dream.” He wasn’t black. He was bi-racial with a white American mother and a Kenyan father. And he grew up with his white grandparents in Hawaii. He almost became exotic or different. In fact, for a short period of time, some African-Americans questioned whether Obama was black enough. And many Americans were able to see past or through his color, and even not identify him as African-American.

However, as the Democratic primary season continued, it became harder and harder to avoid the R-word, race. Based on the result of the primary election, either the first woman or the first African-American would represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election. It became hard to ignore race in the context of the historical significance of putting Obama on the ticket. Yet, the majority of the mainstream media didn’t talk about the implications of race and the voting population. Very little discussion was centered on the pockets of America where people wouldn’t vote for Obama simply because of his race.

So, race became the subtext of the Democratic primary season until the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy blew over in March 2008. The topic couldn’t be avoided—with YouTube videos circulating of Obama’s pastor preaching sermons that many interrupted as angry, unpatriotic and bigoted.

ABC News reported that Wright said, “Blacks should not sing ‘God Bless America’ but ‘God damn America.’” And Obama’s former pastor said September 11 was America getting what it deserved.
Wright is quoted as saying:

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” Wright told his congregation.

Many Americans began to question their previous melting pot and “race-diminished” view of Obama. With Rev. Wright on center stage, people began to wonder if there was just an angry black man lurking beneath Obama’s cool, biracial exterior.

In the Nation magazine article entitled “Black & Blacker”, Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote:

“Even if Obama is the kind of black politician that middle-American white voters can get behind, the secret fear is that he could be a black Trojan horse with all sorts of passengers like Wright—or onetime compadres Bernie Mac and Ludacris—peeping out from under the canvas. He could be… Michelle. Or at least what Michelle represents: a smart, angry black person in the White House.”

The Wright incident cast doubt on Obama’s views on racism and his questionable background with Islamic associations for many Americans. These misgivings coupled with a significant drop in the polls made Obama’s team realize that race had to be addressed if it was ever going to be dismissed. The solution: the now-famous Obama race speech given on March 18, in which he condemned Rev. Wright’s comments while making his own views on racism and patriotism known

In the speech, Obama said:

“But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America—to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.”

And the speech worked for a moment. The R-word became something only discussed privately among friends, in churches and behind closed doors. The media chose not to address the elephant in the room and instead concentrated on the horse race nature of the campaign.

And then something changed around the time Obama took the lead in the primary contest and Hillary Clinton was the assumptive loser. Race once again became the unspoken backdrop of the presidential election. And only those of us paying close attention noticed it lurking in the Hillary Clinton conversations around the possibility of assassination and Obama’s inability to gain white working class votes. Or

“the first black president,” Bill Clinton’s veiled attacks on Obama.

After the primaries concluded and the presidential campaign began, Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain accused Obama as playing the “race card” in his campaign speech in Missouri on July 31, 2008.

The Washington Post reported:

Obama began his day Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., charging: “Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”

Around the same time, mainstream media begin to open the race conversation door just slightly. New York magazine did a story in early August 2008 entitled “Talking About Not Talking about Race,” which discussed American’s unwillingness to address the R-word.

“On the one hand, everyone knows that race matters to a greater or lesser degree; on the other, few of us want to admit it,” said New York magazine writer, Patricia Williams. “Indeed, race is the one topic that’s probably even more taboo in polite company than sex.”

Although the media began talking about the R-word, no one wanted to believe that race was a real issue in this presidential campaign. Everyone wanted to believe that the United States in 2008 was a lot different than the U.S. of 1968. And that America was capable of putting aside race and color to elect someone based on their experience and political standing on issues.

Only recently were the rumors that race was a major factor in the election proven true.

Then came the September 2008 AP/Yahoo poll. The results also showed that at least 40 percent of white Americans still hold a partially negative view toward blacks.

Now, with the issue of race smack dab in the center of the presidential election, the media had to begin talking about it and did—with renewed vigor. Last week, the results of the AP/Yahoo poll along with CNN/Opinion Research Corp.’s survey was all anyone could talk about.

Since there has been a far amount of discussion about the impact of race on Obama’s election chances, several journalists have proposed that’s why he would lose.

“Race is arguably the biggest issue in this election, and it’s one that nobody’s talking about,” wrote CNN’s Jack Cafferty. “The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain couldn’t be more well-defined. Obama wants to change Washington. McCain is a part of Washington and a part of the Bush legacy. Yet the polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense…unless it’s race.”

But now, a week after the poll findings, the R-word has become synonymous with Excuses. Several journalists are saying Obama losing the election because of race is a weak argument.

Jonah Goldberg wrote on September 24th in the National Review:

“This spectacle is grotesque. It reveals how little the supposedly objective press corps thinks of the American people—and how highly they think of themselves…and Obama. Obama’s lack of experience, his doctrinaire liberalism, his record, his known associations with Weatherman radical William Ayers and the hate-mongering Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.: These can’t possible be legitimate motivations to vote against Obama, in this view.

Where the R-word conversation goes from here, only the media knows for certain.