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Opinion: In today’s pages: Is Obama really ‘post-racial?’

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Contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan says Barack Obama isn’t the post-racial panacea that everyone thinks he is:

The core of the resistance to seeing Obama as what he is -- a black man -- even among his supporters (or perhaps especially among his supporters) is an assumption that he is capable and successful because he is ‘other.’ Beneath the post-racial talk and the how-black-is-he speculation lies an antebellum belief that blackness is inherently limiting, while whiteness is inherently transcendent. (Blackness is, however, inherently good for style and ‘soaring’ oratory, qualities the media have been quick to attribute to Obama.)

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Columnist Joel Stein says female running mates could save men the wrath of women mad about missing the chance for a female president. Author and former prison detainee in Tehran Zarah Ghahramani objects to Americans’ radicalized image of Iran.

The editorial board praises newly-appointed Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. It also looks at two cases that will test the Supreme Court’s commitment to protecting Americans from searches, and notes that ships can keep polluting California’s ports unless lawmakers take action.

Readers react to The Times’ poll on the presidency. See why Pasadena’s Siddarth Dasgupta says, ‘The Democrats have not yet chosen their nominee, and you are already lining up to mislead the voting public.’

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