I’ve just finished reading a certain national magazine’s “race” issue with something bordering on amusement and disgust. First of all, of all the featured pieces, only one—a shorter one—was written by a black writer (a non-staff member), and she seems to be so hamstrung by expectations and fearful of offending that I can’t really tell what the heck she’s talking about.

(I once tried to get a young black woman, a student of mine in a seminar at NYU, hired at this same magazine. She was turned down. She has since gone on to be highly successful—although relegated, as women in the media often are, to celebrity stories. One of the few very succesful black women in journalism.)

So this investigation, this meditation, on “race” was written mostly by white people and edited by white editors. So in some way it’s really about the white race, no? But of course, it purports to be all about the Obamas, who have stirred up decades of submerged race talk without ever wanting to (white people developed “race fatigue” several decades ago, as Barack Obama well knows).

And, strangely enough—despite constant accusations of how “the media loves Obama”—the underlying message in the “race” issue of this magazine, wrapped up in all sorts of fancy phrases and theorizing, seems to be: Michelle Obama is just an angry black woman who tries to hide it, and Barack Obama is just an uppity n-word—maybe even a black radical—and white people are just never gonna let them near the White House. It all came off sort of smarty-pants like that New Yorker cover—which tried to make fun of itself, but I think the emporer had no clothes.

America is racist. Duh. Virulently so. Just take a trip down South, where this stuff is way more out in the open. Or scoot over your local ghetto and ask some of the residents how they feel about the state of racism in this country. It would be a lot more instructive than whatever white journalists at national magazines have to say. (But poor blacks rarely get interviewed about race anymore, bafflingly enough.)

Oh, white people are happy to concede that the country’s racist, when it means arguing how it’s this very racism which will keep Obama from the presidency. But get into it more deeply—what should we do about black poverty (or anybody's poverty)? the inequities in the prison system (2 million blacks in jail)? lack of employment? education?—and you’re likely to hear some stuff that won’t sound so far from what those openly racist folks down in Looziana spew.

As soon as Barack Obama sewed up the nomination, the media just turned on him. Oh, it’s been subtle. But as soon as it realized hey, this black man could really become president!, the attacks started coming (starting with that weird “ironic” New Yorker cover…). And now there’s this repellent book out, Obama Nation, written by the anti-John Kerry Swift Boater, Jerome R. Corsi. It’s supposed to debut on the New York Times best-seller list at Number One. Oy. Corsi claims Obama’s full of “black rage...”

My own frustrations with Obama—who I’m still voting for (and dear God I hope he wins)—come from my own feeling that he’s not raging enough. Don’t blacks have a right to be angry, for God's sake? I sure as hell would be (I got plenty of my own rage about some woman stuff, but oops, not supposed to talk about that either, are we? Witness Hillary). It’s just verboten to say so in “polite” company any more. Ooooh, anger bad. Your people are brutalized by the police and thrown in jail and sentenced harder than whites on a daily basis—there was a hurricane down in New Orleans and the Bush administration just left all the blacks there to die (and still hasn't rebuilt their homes)—but why, um, are you so mad?

What is wrong with anger? Anger at injustice? Anger at bigotry? I don't think anything ever changed without somebody getting mad about it. One of my favorite quotes, from St. Augustine: “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

But these days, nobody's supposed to get mad. Especially not blacks. These days, the only people who are "allowed" to get mad are Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly! And, I'm sorry, that's just f-ed up, and that just ain't fair. So Obama can’t show rage, or even reasonable anger. Ever. And everyone knows it—especially him. Not in this racist country. And that’s the insidious trap in which he finds himself: Whites know he must feel differently about certain things than he’s saying—how can he not?—but they won’t ever admit that it’s because there’s good reason for him to. Because that might turn the finger around and point it at them.

I think that anybody who can forgive and forget, or suppress that kind of reasonable rage—or whatever you want to call it—as Obama seems to have, is a fine candidate for president of the United States. You have to deal with all kinds of people in that position, and a whole lot of them not very nice. The ability to see past that to the greater good is some kind of gift.

(Anyway, demographics are going to take care of a lot of this stuff in the next few decades. The cover of the New York Times today tells us: "Minorities Becoming Majority." I love that. "Minorities" are becoming the majority, and yet they're still insisting on calling them "minorities," which makes them sound like they don't matter.)

To give the media some credit, I have to say, on the other hand, I was very impressed by the photo shoot in Harper’s Bazaar this month in which Tyra Banks posed as First Lady. Say what you will about the supposed silliness of fashion magazines (or Tyra herself) it was a pretty goddamn radical image, in this racist country, to see a high-end fashion magazine embracing the idea of a black woman as the next Jackie O. Images have power. I thought it rocked.