During his speech last Tuesday night, president-elect Barack Obama spoke heartily and charismatically about his heritage, his race and how far America has come from slavery.

If you had watched Sen. McCain’s concession speech, you might wonder what Obama could possibly have been talking about.

Although Obama received a majority of the popular vote, receiving eight million more than his competitor, you wonder how many of those eight million votes were cast for him simply because Obama is black.

On the other hand, how many of them were cast against him because he is black?

For the sake of argument, I will concede we have come quite a distance from spraying protesting African-Americans with a fire hose, and further still from forcing them into labor and treating them like sub-humans.

But during McCain’s speech, there was a very taut racial tension being pulled tighter still when McCain pledged everything in his power to help Obama lead this nation.

There is an infuriating and eerie level of Facebook status updates devoted to condemning Obama as a terrorist.

There is a horrifying number of hardcore, purebred racists coming out from every orifice of the woodwork since Obama’s victory, many of whom are taking bets on when the president-elect is “mercifully” assassinated.

The problem I’ve noticed that scares me is there are people who are, for whatever reason, beginning to notice they hate Obama because of his race.

On election night, I met one guy who claimed, wholeheartedly, that he wanted to move to Canada because, quote, “I’ll be damned if I live in a country ruled by a n-----.”

So, Obama, how far have we come again?

Morgan Freeman, the actor, in his infinite wisdom, once said, “I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.”

He knew, as we all should come to know, the best way to end racism is to stop talking about it.

Sen. McCain is a prime example of where our country should be: McCain has never once, even when it might have benefitted his campaign, mentioned Obama’s race, and neither has Obama himself.

Despite Sen. McCain’s best and earnest efforts to keep racism out of his campaign, his overall-clad, rebel flag-waving supporters wanted it back and felt there was no option but to revive it to prove McCain’s point.

His point, by the way, was that he would be a better president than Obama, not that Obama’s race hindered him from responsible decision-making in any way.

So, those of you who hate Obama because of his race, before you prematurely blame him for sending our country to the stone age, you ought to look at yourselves and think long and hard if it’s actually Obama’s fault our country isn’t going anywhere.

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