Obama words help soothe wounds of division

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No one more than a black person in America wishes he could wave a magic wand and rid this country of the vestiges of its "original sin of slavery."

But we better not be caught talking about our past or the racial problems of the present that compel us to live like masked men and women. Instead, we are all ordered to "get along" in denial.

That's unless your bias is in lock step with the unsubstantiated statements shouted daily by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and sometimes on the Sabbath by ministers like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Yet the double standard that forces most black Americans to flee, fight or try to rise above always resurfaces to knock them off the tightrope that they, like Sen. Barack Obama, walk daily.

All races should heed the racial reconciliation speech Mr. Obama delivered in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

"We cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together," he said. So move toward "a more perfect union" by taking a different political path "this time."

"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. ... Or at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time,' " Mr. Obama said.

"This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected," he said.

My Catholic University journalism students this semester, all of them young and white, view race-baiting rhetoric from Geraldine Ferraro, Mr. Wright and others as coming from "relics."

"The problem is that the past is the past and it cannot be changed, but people can change and grow to have a more educated and worldly opinion," writes one student, who describes herself as a registered Republican but counts herself among the "youth of America" energized by the Obama campaign.