> Also, basically, because Obama is
> using "race doesn't matter" rhetoric,
FWIW, in his book _Audacity of Hope_, Obama says clearly (and repeatedly) that when he makes such remarks, he doesn't intend them as a description of what exists. He says that people should look at this as in a split screen -- the world as is and the world as it should be.
So, these remarks are intended as elements of a vision for the nation (a la MLK). He doesn't make an empirical claim that race inequality doesn't exist. That'd be stupid. He just says that it shouldn't exist. And he says (and he's right on this) that people need to focus of this possibility and get inspired by it. By the way, this rhetorical device is very common in politics, including the politics of the left. (I'm not saying that Obama is a leftist. I'm just saying that if we used the same standard, then Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would be big sinners as well.)