Day by day we inch closer to the radioactive subject of race in America and how it has impacted culture, economics, and society in ways not sanctioned by the academic and political elites. Obama will, in time, become the catalyst for a new and far more raw discussion.
The "race" issue really isn't a race issue in America anymore.
It's a culture issue.
Racism is both morally, and logically indefensible. Culturalism however can be debated. It's hard to see how a culture that has a higher propensity for lawlessness, poverty, illiteracy, unwed births, etc. etc. etc. couldn't be examined, and possibly criticized.
The PC/Left knows this, so at the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement, there's been a constant push to identify certain cultural traits as being "race" rather than the earlier definition of race as simple biological fact of ancestry and the color of one's skin.
It's even gone so far, that in some quarters, not being a hoodlum, speaking understandable English, and bettering one's self is seen as "selling out", or being "race X" instead of their own.