In a lifetime where as a child I saw the segregated schools of cousins in Mississippi, and used the outhouse of my grandparents, the 2008 presidential race is not an unsung story. Yet one cannot sing enough about it.
Going by the latest polls in the key early caucus or primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, either a black man or a white woman will win the Democratic nomination. It is happily hilarious to see the black man, Barack Obama, tout the white women who support him and the white woman, Hillary Clinton, parade the black people who will vote for her.
It is pure delight to visit small towns in Iowa and hear independents say they could go for either Republican John McCain or Obama and hear white women and black people say it is hard to choose between the candidates regardless of gender or race. Every time I scribble down the consternation of the voters, I hear an America struggling in the best sense to live up to its promise.
Derrick Z. Jackson
29 December 2007
Boston Globe
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