One of the Post's editors apparently told ombudsman Michael Getler "Race is gone as an issue. There is a new South...." Man, have we heard that one before. The two parties in the South are as polarized around race as they ever were, though the names have been switched. (No single group is more committed to evangelical Christianity than southern African-Americans -- but no one is surprised that African-Americans saw their interests aligned with the Democrats on November 2.) The system of almost lily-white church-related schools is flourishing at 50, and the prisons overflow with African-Americans. Far from being gone as an issue, race has been so all-pervasive for so long that it has apparently become invisible to some of our media cognoscenti.
Larry Yates, November 2004