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Belinda, I certainly agree with the overall thrust of your statement about the ugly history of racial discrimination in the United States, which effectively pushed people with darker skins -- even if their ancestry was only part African -- into being considered "black." However, it's not quite true to say, "The only community to love and nurture dark-skinned people were dark-skinned people. The only community to support, educate and encourage dark-skinned people were dark-skinned people." I think Obama's own personal history suggests otherwise. In fact, his light-skinned mother and grandparents did "love, nurture, support, educate and encourage" Obama, who was a dark-skinned person. Moreover, Obama's book, Memories of My Father, describes his childhood in Hawai'i as a period when he rarely experienced racial discrimination. Probably he was fortunate to live in one of the few U.S. state where non-Hispanic whites do not form a majority, and which has a large percentage of persons of mixed race. (He tells a story in the book of of being shocked at age 9 of seeing a photo in a magazine of a black man whose skin had been damaged with he received a chemical treatment to lighten his complexion. It was at that moment, he says, that he discovered discrimination existed.)

I'm sure we'll all be discussing for quite some time the significance of Obama's election to our understanding of what race means in America. Hopefully that discussion will be civil and uplifting. Already I think the story of his life -- even before the new chapter that is now unfolding with his election to the presidency -- tells us that the story of race in this country is not as "black and white" as some have imagined it to be.