News & Views

 I watched Barack Obama’s “Toward A More Perfect Union” in my living room, on a laptop computer with tinny speakers.  Like millions of other Americans, I felt a surge of amazement, a sense of expanding possibility, at the sheer fact that a black man with a good chance of becoming president was speaking about race and racism on national television for half an hour.  Such an eloquent and thoughtful discourse on any topic far exceeds what we have come to accept of American politics; to hold forth on an issue so pernicious and so seldom approached with honesty is remarkable.