In response to the media firestorm over the series of incendiary remarks made by his “spiritual mentor,” Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday on the issue of race in America.

I have known all along that Obama’s meteoric rise from obscurity to stardom has been fueled significantly, even if not exclusively, by the fact that he possesses more melanin than any other candidate. It seems that, at long last, the illusion at which he and his admirers in the “liberal” and “conservative” media labored so diligently at crafting, the illusion that he is “trans-racial,” is finally dissolving before our eyes.

Obama is a “black candidate,” not a candidate that just happens to be black. And far from being the one person who will “unite” us, I fear that an Obama presidency will exponentially exacerbate inter-racial tensions. Even before the Jeremiah Wright issue reinforced this suspicion of mine, two other seemingly isolated events occurred last month that confirmed my fears.

First, Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist organization, gave Obama a resounding endorsement, hailing an Obama presidency as a sign of hope to the whole world and America’s only shot at redemption. The other episode involved nationally syndicated talk radio host Bill Cunningham who, while arousing a crowd of McCain supporters at a rally, repeatedly referred to Obama by his full name —- Barrack Hussein Obama. What do these two events have in common? They reveal both the racial dimension of Obama’s campaign, as well as the impossibility of getting around it, however much we may desire to do so.

Let’s look at each in turn.

Obama promises ad nauseam to bring “change” to America. He has failed, of course, to specify in anything like a clear, systematic way what he means by this. Yet if we attend carefully to the overall context within which he makes this call for change —- Obama’s autobiography, his various speeches and interviews, and the comments of his “rock,” Michelle -— an increasingly plausible interpretation of the kind of change that he favors begins to come into focus. Obama, like his wife, believes that America is now and always has been a fundamentally racist society. As they see it, America was conceived, not in liberty, but in racism. This was America’s original sin, the offense from which no white American, regardless of age or conduct, can escape responsibility.

In his most recent speech, “A More Perfect Union,” Obama expressly asserts that the U.S. Constitution is an “ultimately unfinished” document, a document “stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery…” The Biblical language is telling, for it gives us a glimpse of Obama’s self-conception, a conception that coincides with Farrakhan’s vision of him. The “hope” he offers to white folks is the hope of “salvation” from the bondage of “white racism.” The “change” he promises isn’t merely a change of direction; it is a change of an epoch from the old dispensation to the new. Farrakhan understands this. He makes explicit what Obama knows he must keep implicit, but both see Obama as something much more than just a presidential contender “who happens to be black.” Both know that Obama is a black messiah who will redeem America (by which they mean white America) and reconcile it with God, or with all that is True, Beautiful, and Good.

There is a price to be paid for this salvation, though. This will bring us in just a moment to Bill Cunningham’s remarks. Just as Christ told his disciples that they must take up their own crosses if they are to follow him, so whites who long for redemption must prove that they have genuinely repented of their racism by doing two things. First, they must support Obama, of course. Secondly, they must refrain from making any allusions to Obama’s racial and/or cultural heritage that stand a better chance than not of defeating his presidential prospects.

After his campaign invited Cunningham to jazz up the crowd at his rally, McCain denounced the famously audacious talk show host for referring to Obama by his full name. On February 26, on Hannity and Colmes, Karl Rove called on Republicans and conservatives to refrain from addressing Obama in these terms. Rove is concerned that it will make Obama’s right-leaning critics appear “bigoted.”

That we are even talking about this should be enough to make all enemies of “political correctness” shudder in fear over the fact that Obama has made it this far, to say nothing of the prospect of an Obama presidency. White people, including white Republicans, are so fearful of being accused of racial bigotry that they will go so far as to condemn fellow Republicans who address a politician, quite possibly the next president of the United States, by his full name. Moreover, what is worse, we have reached a point where using his full name can make one vulnerable to charges of racism. Far from improving inter-racial relations, an Obama presidency, I dread, will drastically worsen them. As the scrutiny of Obama intensifies, accusations of racism on the part of his supporters will proliferate exponentially. Obama will permit this, even if he doesn’t chime in himself. There is one more thing to consider, however.

In the age of Obama, “racism” will be an even more egregious offense than it is now, however impossible that may sound. “Racism” will no longer be viewed as “mean-spiritedness,” “sickness,” or mere “immorality.” Because a President Obama will be not just a “leader,” but a “Messiah,” “racism” will come to equal “blasphemy.”