This is a fantastic article.

What we are now witnessing is not some new and complicated expression of white racism—rather, it’s the dying embers of the same old racism that once rendered the best pickings of America the exclusive province of unblackness.

I agree with this. The baby boomer generation was born into a very different America. Not only was it more segregated between white and black, but whites were a greater proportion of the populous. Boomers were born into a white country, that had minorities. They are now forced to engage different people, of different colors, speaking different languages. From what I see, they either eagerly embrace it, try to ignore it, or quietly resent it. But, IMHO they don't seem to be able to be unconscious of it. As evidence, the Census still tries to make sense of the country through their eyes.

In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed.

There is definitely truth to this. However, I think the author under-appreciates Obama's whiteness. Not in terms of his mother being white, but in terms of the culture that he was exposed to, and raised in. I guarantee that Barack has sat among white people, and one of them forgot that he was black and said something negative about blacks, and then he/she qualified it by trying to make a distinction that he/she didn't quite understand himself/herself.

IMO I think that there is a real possibility that one component of Barack's reticence to engage race is that he might not have the desire to do so. Barack has been white and black. He knows that although they can be distinguished from each other, they are the same cloth and have the same qualities of interactions. Race is a language, it is not communication. To defend or to embrace blackness or whiteness to any extent beyond the superficial qualities by which we recognize them is to point towards a path that gives credence to the idea that these qualities are not superficial. Therefore, IMHO Barack might very well only feel motivated to engage race when he sees people acting upon it, but not as a state of being, a condition, or a ideal. Race is dependent, it is not intrinsic.

Of course, Obama is also a pragmatist and a politician.