Larson's point that "attention to the race of black candidates reinforces fears among white voters that he or she will not represent them" reminded me, of course, of Obama's election and re-election. As much as some white Obama opponents deny that their disapproval of him is about race (ignoring for a moment the people who will shout it from the mountaintops), it is very likely that they feared being represented by a black man in that his values will not be aligned with their own. What does it say about our great and powerful country if we have a black man as a president? If wealth and power are typically associated with the white man, what does it mean if this archetype is dethroned? I think that's why so many people have taken comfort in the notion that Obama is "not like" other black men. After Obama's first State of the Union, Chris Matthews stated that he "forgot [Obama] was black" while watching news coverage of the address. Even Joe Biden referred to him as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." (Ouch.) I would even go so far as to say that this ideology is what leads us to the notion that we live in a post-racial society--look, you can't even tell the difference between 'em anymore! Race is now a non-issue. It is as though, in order to make a candidate or a politician more trustworthy, we have to squint our eyes and try to see them as white.