The more we run from race, the faster it chases after us

If my grandmother were still with us, she'd marvel that in the span of five decades, the opportunities for a man like Barack Obama have widened exponentially from porter to president.

I'd sit and marvel with her, my pleasure tempered by the reality that in 2008 Obama may ascend to the presidency but he'll never transcend race.

America just isn't ready to move past the symbolism of an Obama presidential bid to the man within.

He would always be the black president. Similar to being the black columnist, the black CEO or the black coach. He should just think of it as a title preceding his name.

Race is always the subtext. No matter how broad our sensibilities become, racial identity remains the way our eyes make sense of what's before us. This will get Obama votes in some quarters and hate mail from others.

Even those who deify the senator from Illinois are dazzled more by his skin tone than political hue. I swear, if I have to read another saga detailing the fine line Obama must walk being a racially mixed candidate, I may crawl back into yesterday's champagne bottle not to emerge until after the election.

It isn't really a fine line; more like a major arterial, one navigated by many before him.

Obama may be the first black presidential candidate to come absent a racially identifiable agenda but corporate America is lousy with people walking the same path. He must appeal to a largely white electorate while not appearing to lose his black identity, so say the pundits? Been there, done that. I and others have the scars to prove it.

The more we run from race, the faster it chases after us. Corporate America is awash with people walking the supposed fine line between what people expect based on our skin tone and what we intend to deliver. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I opined that it wasn't black people the Bush administration was hostile to, but the unsightly plight of the poor. Luckily, I'm not running for anything. Obama characterized the federal government's incompetence as colorblind, garnering the ire of many blacks, notably the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

This is the duality of being black in a country still obsessed with color. No matter what our racial heritage, Obama's words are hard to match with our stereotypical expectations. His physical appearance is another contradiction. The Rev. Al Sharpton said Obama's popularity comes from his being the anti-Sharpton candidate.

Here in the Northwest, we stake claim to a more egalitarian form of politics. Our record is one of electing a Chinese-American governor, a black King County executive and a black man as mayor of Seattle. Even then, it was as much about racial symbolism as it was about the issues. Gary Locke, Ron Sims and Norm Rice made us feel good about ourselves. They made us feel progressive, hopeful and a part of America's future, not its ugly, racial past.

Symbolism has its value. There is value in young would-be journalists seeing my face in a largely still-white industry. There is value for young African-American girls, struggling to rise above Don Imus' nappy-headed-ho jokes, to see Michelle Obama greeting dignitaries and average people alike, proving Jackie Kennedy didn't close the book on class, grace and style.

I want us to move beyond Obama's symbolism so I can get past it. I want to stop carrying the burden I see strapped across his back: the deferred dreams of 30 million people.

Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the NAACP, explained the symbolic predicament of Obama's candidacy in words that could apply to any of us.

A portion of black voters want Obama to give them some raw meat because they want so badly to have their concerns addressed and highlighted, and they expect it of him because he's black.

And Obama? He'll have to do like many of us and take it one day at a time, rejecting stereotypes placed upon him from all sides and defying expectations of the same. All the while, he'll have to accept that while he may want to move beyond skin color, few others in America are ready.

A political scribe many decades ago foresaw the conundrum the man who would be our first black president faces. H.L. Mencken opined that The Negro leader of today is not free. He must look to white men for his very existence, and in consequence he has to waste a lot of his energy trying to think white. What the Negroes need is leaders who can and will think black.

In 2008, it is unfortunately the way so many still think.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is seattletimes.com">lvarner@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com