Two great columns on race and American identity, to ourselves and in the world, in today's New York Times.
Roger Cohen delivered another inspired, nearly rhapsodic piece about what the idea of Barack Obama means to the world.
And Nicholas Kristof here presents some intriguing (however intuitive, at least to me) research on nature versus cultural nurture in our perception of race. My favorite finding:
A flood of recent research has shown that most Americans, including Latinos and Asian-Americans, associate the idea of “American” with white skin. One study found that although people realize that Lucy Liu is American and that Kate Winslet is British, their minds automatically process an Asian face as foreign and a white face as American — hence this title in an academic journal: “Is Kate Winslet More American Than Lucy Liu?”
More evidence of the amazing year of Obama opening once hidden doors in the American mind.
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