Black, White, Red, and Blue

Barack Obama went to Philadelphia to talk about race and blew it. Rather than focus on our need to treat people as individuals rather than as racial tribes, Senator Obama gave a history lesson on slavery and group differences premised on the different "black" and "white" experiences in America.

He offered a bone to those whites who resent affirmative action and feel they are the victims of "reverse discrimination," but he did not say there are many whites — including those who voted for him — who do not resent affirmative action and who do not put either themselves or other individuals into racial boxes.

Mr. Obama could have and should have said race ain't what it used to be in America, and that we cannot let the rants of ministers of whatever color who live in the past to turn us backward and keep our heads buried into victim hood or angry grievance. That would have been a Martin L. King Jr.-type visionary break with skin color judgments.

I waited in vain for the transformational presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there ought be no such thing as race or color separations. There are three colors that unite — red, white, and blue. I wanted to hear Mr. Obama sing the national anthem that we all belong to the same race — the human race. I waited in vain, too, for him to mesmerize us with a focused appeal to a single standard of achievement and judgment of our behavior, whether we are elected officials or religious leaders.

The pulpit was Mr. Obama's but he spent his moral capital on gibberish about how blacks and whites have differently trained or "untrained" ears and sensibilities when it comes to judging whether a minister is preaching hate or nourishing the souls of his dispirited flock with entreaties of group blame.

Mr. Obama's talk was sheer racial rhetoric about "the black experience." I am black, and I just won't relate to a "black experience" that shields and "explains" old-style black ministers who rant about supposed racial differences and about how America ought to be damned.

I cannot and could never continue my membership in a church or in an association where the leadership had such errant and despicable views as blaming a person's race or religion for the troubles we've seen as a beleaguered people or as a nation that identifies with and supports Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

Indeed, all my associations that preached the gospel of race and ethnic chauvinism I long ago broke away from — including canceling my membership in 100 Black Men, Inc. when that group did not act on my motion to open its ranks to non-blacks and to women.

I took my stand and Mr. Obama should have taken his against racial idiocy. Leaders must be held accountable if their behavior and their closest associates don't treat people as equals. At a time when people are looking to be judged by their individual character and merit rather than by their skin color or gender or sexual orientation, that is the kind of leader Americans are looking for in this "change" presidential race.

We want our presidential candidates, man or woman, black or white, to lead us out of the assignations of our previous victimization or preferred status on the basis of immutable traits such as skin color and sex.

We want every candidate, but especially Senator Obama, to refute and disprove Governor Rendell's claim that between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh there are (white) voters in Pennsylvania who simply will not vote for a black candidate seeking our highest elected office. Absolute equality for all people is the single standard to which all our elected officials must adhere, as they separate religion from government.

The same goes for John McCain, of course, who should be taken to task for accepting the endorsement of an out-and-out bigot. And the same goes for Hillary Clinton whose surrogates have acted despicably as they have pandered to racial fears and biases, and stoked the "female" and "white" vote. The message of absolute equality and zero tolerance for all forms of bigotry is the kind of speech on race we needed to hear from Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama let us down because he lifted up Reverend Wright as a good person underneath all his racist and hateful rants. In so doing, Mr. Obama told us a lie — that the color of one's ears determines what and how we hear the voice of a minister guilty of the sin of racial vanity, group blame, and ethnic polarization.

The candidate who takes on the haters in America and those who continue to make something of race that it is not will make a significant breakthrough with the huge numbers of voters who want real change, change that we can believe in.

Someday, sooner than ever before, we Americans will come to regard one another's skin color just like how we view each other's eye color. But we must be ably led to that place in history, to that destination in our immediate future. The man or woman who talks straight about our commonality as a race of human beings, about our nation as one and indivisible by skin color or ethnic loyalty, he or she will do us a great public service.

Mr. Meyers, a former assistant national director of the NAACP, is the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.