Americans are listening to Senator Obama on the issue of race, and recognizing something qualitatively different about what he's saying. That's because he's addressing race-based discrimination in a larger context--that of human dignity and affronts to dignity that are even broader than racism itself.
Racial discrimination is but one brand of a more pervasive and still unacknowledged form of abuse and discrimination--rankism. Other subspecies of rankism are sexism, ageism, ableism, classism, nativism, homophobia, etc. All of these ignominious "isms"...
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