These voices also argue that to overcome this pathology blacks must focus on the moral repair of their own (the black) community and give less attention to race prejudice and discrimination as an explanation for lagging equality between blacks and whites.
I suspect the discomfort some Americans feel about him has less to do with race than style.
With Mount Vernon's population more than half black, the traditional division between north and south now has less to do with race than class.
Pakistanis (a well-established but growing group) are disliked, too, probably because of fears of domestic terrorism and memories of riots in 2001.The fact that immigration has less to do with race only makes it easier to dislike.
In fact, many politicians, particularly those aligned with Mr. Ramirez, suggest that the new generation of leadership he is championing has less to do with race than with political philosophy.
This dialectic seems familiar because it may have less to do with race and empire than with class; it is the classic movement from province to metropolis, whereby the provincial, who has never wanted to be anywhere but the metropolis, nevertheless judges it with a provincial skepticism, while judging the provinces with a metropolitan superiority.
But Obama's blitheness about politics may have less to do with race than it does with class — conservative commentators pegged her as a paragon of élitist leftism — or, more likely, for a daughter of blue-collar Chicago, with personal disposition.
To be fair, the snub of the South African President probably had less to do with race per se than with foreign policy, the field in which Helms, who since 1986 has been either the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or its ranking Republican, has done his worst mischief.
But Obama's blitheness about politics may have less to do with race than it does with class conservative commentators pegged her as a paragon of élitist leftism or, more likely, for a daughter of blue-collar Chicago, with personal disposition.
Following the mass shooting Wednesday night at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, some conservatives have suggested that the tragedy had less to do with race and more to do with a supposed anti-Christian vendetta.
