Jonathan Tilove, Black Agenda Report
- For scholars of race, Barack Obama presents a new American dilemma. On the one hand, his election as president would be a breathtaking symbol of racial progress. On the other, an Obama victory could prove illusory, doing little to dismantle racism while crippling their ability to call attention to it.
“Then what will we do as race scholars?” wondered University of Virginia political scientist Lynn Sanders.
Newhouse News Service asked some of the nation’s leading students of race about the predicament.
“At this point, any conflict I might have is more than eased by the knowledge that Barack Obama, if elected, could be the salvation of a country in free flight failure,” Derrick Bell, a professor of law at New York University, who taught Obama when he was a student at Harvard Law School, replied via e-mail.
