"Because He's Black"

With Hillary Clinton's chances fading, the issue of race is boiling to the surface, as it did in West Virginia and will again in Kentucky tomorrow.

Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers quoted one of last week's voters telling a BBC interviewer why Barack Obama can't win the White House: "Because he's black."

"There it was," Moyers pointed out, "no longer a whisper but out in public, on the record: Because he is black. The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in this election...We heard it all week and now the political world is asking: Could the candidate who has won more votes, more states and more delegates lose in November and could the reason be race?"

Ugly as the question is, it will be asked and answered between now and November, but what it says about America, regardless of whether Obama wins or loses, is something we all need to know.

How deep does the prejudice go? As he loses two border states, Obama drew 75,000 people in Oregon yesterday, a huge crowd that brings back visual memories of Martin Luther King in Washington over 40 years ago making his "I have a dream" speech.

The New York Times reports Obama's reaction: “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

"It is 'fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd' of his campaign, he told the audience."

Obama is living out King's dream this year, but how will it end? In a replay of yesterday's heartening spectacle or as a nightmare in the darkest part of the American heart silently voting its fears and prejudices in the solitude of ballot boxes in November?