The growing visibility of the birther movement underscores both the enduring power of race in American politics, as well as the enduring cultural symbolism of the American presidency. The birther movement is not merely the province of increasingly vocal paranoics, as some commentators would have it. Rather it is increasingly...

As we all know, the dominant explanation coming out of Oregon and Kentucky's differing Democratic primary results will go like this: Oregonians are wealthier, better-educated and racially homogeneous, and therefore free of the kind of racial politics we have seen in other states recently. Hence their support for Obama. Kentuckians,...