Ellington

Warning: If you're considering running for president, there are several pitfalls to expect, as we've learned over recent weeks.

First, the media will criticize you for talking about religion too much right up until the point that they start parsing your pastor's sermons to see what they can use against you.

So, if you're considering the presidency, and especially if you're black and have gone to a hell-raising church for the last few decades, figure out a way to ensure that your pastor never made a Malcolm X reference about the chickens coming home to roost for the U.S. because of our own past inadvisable actions abroad. Or mentioned white supremacy.

Because, even if you don't agree with every word your preacher has ever said, you will be held accountable for every word if the likes of conservative George Will has his way.

At least, from now on. This has not been true in the past, of course. But this is a new, "post-racial" era in America. Ahem.

On that note, if you're a person of color, or partly of color, you've got to figure out how to deal with your non-whiteness in a way that a race-obsessed country that pretends it doesn't ever think about race can handle. Understand that, regardless of what you do or say, you are black, or Hispanic, first.

So if you start out your campaign attracting an amazing cross-section of voters of various races, ages and economic backgrounds, you will not be, say, "black enough." Understand that you will then hit an easy plateau during which time you will be considered "post-racial"—remember, race doesn't matter in the U.S. any longer. That's over.

Then the other shoe drops. Should your campaign begin attracting young people of color, not to mention older ones (perhaps helped along by racist ploys and backward insults that make it sound like every black man is Jesse Jackson), buckle your seatbelt. Then, all of a sudden, you have a white male problem.

Now, it doesn't matter if you're still getting a record number of white voters in states like Mississippi—the last black presidential candidate in a Democratic primary here (Al Sharpton) got 5 percent of the vote—or even if you're attracting record numbers of African Americans who often don't bother to vote.

If you "only" get 30 percent of the white vote, but 90 percent of the black vote invigorated to turn out for you, then you're at risk of alienating the white guys, not to mention the national media. We like to call it the "I see black people" response here at the JFP (hat tip to Emily); that is, many black people showing up to do anything just makes white people nervous, regardless of their party.

It can't be right.

All of a sudden, you are no longer post-racial; you might as well be a Muslim. After all, just listen to your preacher. It doesn't matter if you've denounced those particular comments, or if many of those complaining about your preacher have soaked up racist, white-privilege comments from their own pastors, or aging uncles, or TV preacher-donors, for years. You are responsible. Why? Because some white guy who likely will vote for John McCain anyway doesn't like it. Well, you might respond, you could probably replace those nervous white guys with all these new voters you're motivating to turn out, so what's the big deal?

The big deal? White folks don't like to be made uncomfortable. We're told not to apologize for the past; not to discuss reparations or rebuilding the ghettoes our people redlined a race of people into; and we damn sure shouldn't hanker to a president whose pastor sounds a bit like Malcolm X now and again.

Finally, there's that whole problem of reverse-politically correct backlash that makes members of one historically discriminated group (women) turn on members of another historically discriminated group (people of color). And within that little tug-o'-war some real ugliness can lurk.

It was bad enough when a former president, who happens to be stumping for his wife to get his old seat, refers to you as if you are simply a retread of Jesse Jackson—because people of color are all alike. It was even worse when his wife tried to negate the role of blacks in the Civil Rights Movement, instead crediting a white president who only acted after many of those black folks were beaten and murdered, alongside some white ones.

But dare to win on your own merits—like figuring out how to appeal to voters disgusted with partisan politics and corporate donations and who might have been against NAFTA and the Democratic Leadership Council and authorizing the Iraq War because it was politically expedient (then) and whose husband caved to GOP welfare rhetoric—and the attack dogs for the opposing campaign will say that you've only gotten this far because you're black. Forget the other stuff.

Never mind that your opponent got her own self a mighty boost to the top of the political heap without ever having to run for an office lesser than U.S. senator in a state she had never lived in. She might not be there because she is a woman, but she is there now because she is the wife of a former president.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but imagine if you stated that fact out loud. You suddenly would be the biggest sexist on the planet. However, the woman who was the first female vice presidential candidate only because she was a woman—and nothing wrong with that, either—cannot see past your blackness, or understand your appeal.

She cannot see that you have transcended race for many people (although a good number of them, as I do, may find your race delicious icing on the cake, not to mention one damn useful tool in the world communication arsenal). She cannot see how wrong, and false, and ignorant, it is to say that you are only ahead at this point because you're black as she looks right past all the excited young voters who want everything you have to offer, either including your race or without paying any attention to it.

That woman, sadly, cannot see what a major advance this fact is for our country. And she cannot even feel the ironic bliss in the fact that we suddenly have gone from a place where race is a major block to the White House to a place where at least some people see it as an unfair major boost.

I don't know about you, but that's a country I can get excited about living, working and voting in after all these years of the muck and gloom of white supremacy.

That leads me to one, and only one, conclusion: Think big. Run for office. Ignore the ignorance. Otherwise, the a-holes win.