Obama!

The American presidential race is so exciting! for once I wished I were an american so that I can be a part of all that hubhub. Singapore's ones are really omgosh.. worse than a candle to the sun. I'm for Obama! and when I read this...

"Candidacy taken seriously despite his race or because of it?
The key factor that galvanizes people around the idea of Obama for president is, quite simply, that he is black. Take away Obama's race and he is some relatively anonymous rookie.

What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land. President Obama might be a substitute for that national apology for slavery that some consider so urgent. Surely a nation with a black president would be one no longer hung up on race.

Or not. Perhaps Obama is being considered as presidential timber not despite his race, but because of it. That is, for all its good intentions, a dehumanization of Obama. What Obama has done is less important than his skin color and what it means. The content of our character is not center stage here. We are a long way from Selma, but not yet where the Rev. King wanted us to be.

Yet, in the grant scheme of things, I will take a little unintended dehumanization over naked bigotry."

haha it's the way I see it too. I'd want him to be President because he's a black (or even better half-black-half-white) and I'm anti-racist and I agree that it is about time for some symbolic action. haha anw I realise anti-racism is ironically an intolerance of the intolerance of others. The more I read about him, the more impressed I'm by his attitude of realism, the way he is practical and sensible about his Christian faith, the way he points out painful and scary truths about their present and past governments. I like the way he values transparency. But I must admit that he hit my soft spot being racially sensitive and with his ability to heighten racial awareness by simply being in the position he is in now. I love racial issues. It is something I feel strongly about and something that interests me deeply.

I find his take on gay-rights issues interesting too! I'd never thought of it in that manner - to disentangle marriage from gay-rights. it's kinda like the perfect balance between his Christian values and his need to remain politically neutral by likening gay-rights to civil rights and to have marriage maintain the sacredness the institution should be rightly accorded with.
He's written a few books and I really, really want to read them.. especially the one about his personal racial and identity struggles. I'd always read those about Asian-americans, but I have yet to pick up one about an African-American or a black-n-white.