Ability To Transcend Race

"Indeed, many white liberal Obama supporters openly admitted that what they liked about the candidate was his ability to “transcend race” (which implicitly meant to transcend his own blackness), to “make white people feel good about ourselves,” and the fact that he “didn’t come with the baggage of the civil rights movement.” In other words, many whites liked Obama precisely because they were able to view him as fundamentally different than other black folks. He was an exception. His blackness wasn’t problematic. It didn’t make white people uncomfortable.

But to view Barack Obama as different from the black norm — and to view this difference as a positive thing — is to suggest that “normal” blackness is tainted, negative, to be avoided, and certainly not supported politically."

http://www.timwise.org/2010/08/with-friends-like-these-who-needs-glenn-beck-racism-and-white-privilege-on-the-liberal-left/