To no slight extent, this presidential race is about race. 

We all know this—however reluctant we may be to admit it.  Those who would deny this fact do so only by giving it a different name.

One of the contestants has been universally hailed as “America’s first black president.” This alone is enough to establish that, at a minimum, there must be a racial subtext to his campaign to be reelected.

Nevertheless, there are other—many other—considerations that can be cited.

For one, in any society comprised of more than one racial group, its politics will inescapably involve racial politics. Now, the United States is a society comprised of more than one racial group. 

Thus, American politics are always racially themed—even if the racial dimension isn’t explicit.

Second, Americans talk endlessly about race (again, even if much of this talk is implicit).  Perhaps they are no different than anyone else in this regard.  But the point is that it is ridiculous to think that the only time, or one of the only times, when we can abandon racial talk is when there is a presidential election and, even more unrealistically, of the two contenders, one is white and the other is black.  

Third, overwhelmingly, whites planning on voting for the white candidate.  Even more overwhelmingly, blacks (and to a lesser extent, Hispanics) plan on voting for the black guy.

Fourth, the white contestant, Republican challenger Willard Mitt Romney, embodies every racial stereotype regarding white America in which his opponent and his opponent’s ideological ilk have been trading for probably at least as long as a half-of-a-century. 

In short, Romney is the proverbial poster child for “1950’sAmerica.”  He and his family are obviously white, but to look at them is to think that they are as white as “the pure driven snow.”  Romney has a picturesque family—good looking, healthy, successful.  However questionable many may find some of the theological tenets of their Mormonism, the Romneys are known for being active members of their church, and Mitt Romney, we now know, has contributed tremendous sums of his own money to a variety of charitable organizations. 

Romney’s, in other words, is the quintessential face of the American dream.   

Yet because his face is that of a white man and a Christian, and because—especially because—Romney possesses a sea of wealth that he made in the private sector, he personifies the rank hypocrisy underlying the American dream. 

Romney, you see, epitomizes the “child of privilege,” the white bourgeoisie whose pursuit of the American dream always come at the cost of engendering a nightmare for “the Other”—“the disadvantaged,” women, the non-white, etc.

Make no mistakes: these are the associations that assume center stage in the leftist imagination.  And thanks to the leftist’s remarkably successful campaign to wrestle control of our institutions, these are the associations that now linger within the popular consciousness as well. 

Fifth, Barack Hussein Obama is America’s first black president. The image of Obama that this distinction conjures up is that of a Civil Rights-style hero who has shattered the last glass ceiling of white racial oppression.  In criticizing Obama, to say nothing of attempting to prevent him from securing a second term, his opponents can all too easily be seen as coming down on the wrong side of history.

And we know that Obama and his supporters spare no occasion to charge their rivals with “racism.”

Finally, from his pastor and spiritual mentor of over 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, to Joseph Lowery, the pastor who gave the benediction at his inauguration and who, it was recently revealed, remarked that “all white folks are going to hell,” we know that Obama has a long history of allying himself with all manner of folks who can only be described as anti-white.     

Let us be honest with ourselves: race figures quite significantly in this year’s presidential race.