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For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics
posted on October 22, 2012The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor analyzes President Obama’s balancing act between reaching out to a key part of his political base–African Americans–and not being seen simply as America’s first black president. Kantor writes that Obama seems to accomplish this feat with ease, yet “[this] ease belies the anxiety and emotion that advisers say he brings to his historic position: pride in what he has accomplished, determination to acquit himself well and intense frustration. Mr. Obama is balancing two deeply held impulses: a belief in universal politics not based on race and an embrace of black life and its challenges.”