Though Barack Obama’s presence is enveloping America and a bright future exists in the rapidly approaching 2008 presidential election, critics are expeditiously and effectively destroying a movement of hope and change.

America has always resonated from the institution of racism, which, if not addressed through progressive dialogue, might destroy our future. Enter Barack Obama. He will undoubtedly be persecuted by the extreme of white America, but he is currently receiving his harshest persecution from black America. The majority of members of the African-American race is confused of its identity and is inflicting its “Inferiority Complex” toward possibly the first black president.

Race inequality is not only inflicted from without, but also from within. The latter is the greater saboteur because it causes the minority to establish a group discriminated against by either race – the light-skinned African-American.

The blood that runs through my veins is of African slave descent, and, as Obama critic Stanley Couch so delicately put it, white U.S. stock. I have been the victim of blatant racism from black and white Americans, and this is undoubtedly an immense problem for our nation.

This behavior is coming from a nation that annihilated a fascist regime that persecuted human beings according to hair color, eye color and religion.

Critics have been heavily downplaying Obama’s pursuit for hope and change because of his biracial background. Couch said, “Other than color, Obama did not – and does not – share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves.” And who were the descendants of the first shackled Africans?

Couch continued, “He will have to run as the son of a white woman and an African immigrant. If we then end up with him as our first black president, he will have come into the White House through a side door.” Has that door only been opened because of Crouch’s racist rhetoric? At times, I can’t determine if racism is more detrimental to the American psyche coming from whites or blacks. Could it be that the extremes of white America and black America are in cahoots to protect the status quo of this divided, ethnocentric society?

Realistically, Obama is imperative to the healing of our nation, because he exemplifies a race-blind childhood. Wasn’t the plight of the of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to not include the struggles of Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Wilson and Ida B. Wells?

Obama describes his father as “black as pitch” and looking nothing like the people around him. That his mother was “white as milk” barely registered in his mind. That sounds like the American Dream to me.

Also, critics are scrutinizing him for coming to politics from academia. Aren’t education and opportunity key aspects of the American Dream? America must understand that American society is confused and ignorant of the progress established when blacks and whites unite. John Brown’s raid, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, the Black Panther Party, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (though a couple hundred years too late), are a few of numerous examples of unified achievements.

We must understand history to establish a harmonious future, instead of presenting a facade of a civilized, opportunity-granting nation that focuses on trivial subjects such as the amount of Vitamin D a human being possesses. It’s upon us to heal.

To echo the words of a “real descendant of a plantation slave,”” Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Marcus Thomas is a junior in political science and journalism. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].