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'Mutt' Prez Will Move US Beyond Equality

Obama vanquishes not just inequality, but old ideas of racial purity

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 24, 2008 1:18 PM CST

(Newser) – Our enemies love using US racial divisions as a stick to beat Americans with, a stick “we’ve handed them over and over again,” writes Gregory Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times. Now, Barack Obama gives us a crucial symbol of progress—and it won’t be because Obama’s black, but because, in his words, he’s “a mutt.”

Obama’s election allows the US to do more than simply gloat about “treating our minorities better than you treat yours.” It’s a sign the melting pot, which thanks to racism and anti-miscegenation laws used to melt only whites, now blends colors, too. “If he chooses to highlight his mixed background, he could truly vanquish our old ideas of racial purity,” Rodriguez writes. “Out of many, one. Really.”

[Images (3)]

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If Obama presents himself as a "mutt," he might smash typical black-and-white racial thinking. (AP Photo)

President-elect Barack Obama speaks to a customer during a visit to Manny's Coffee Shop and Deli in Chicago, Nov. 21, 2008. (AP Photo)

President-elect Barack Obama, left, his wife Michelle Obama, right, and two daughters, Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10, second from right, wave at the election night rally in Chicago, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

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The deeper racial significance of Obama might be that we can finally come to terms with the fact that the proverbial pot has and will mix races as well as ethnicities. - Gregory Rodriguez

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'Mutt' Prez Will Move US Beyond Equality