"But this season there's no "Obama" sign there of any size, not even throw-pillow dimension.

" 'It's the 'B-L-A-C-K' issue,' a neighbor explained. 'You hear it everywhere.'

"But it hardly has to be spelled out for most of us that race has been injected into presidential politics in unprecedented ways.

"Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, is rewriting the history of an America shackled since inception by racial divide.

"Missouri has been at the crux of that old story and is at its crux now.

"A swing state, a bellwether, it looks like a jump ball once again. But could Obama, positioning himself as a post-racial candidate, be pulled down by racism there?

"Should he lose, said Brad Stokes, a union official in Springfield who is white, 'it would be a shame to tell our kids the reason was that race was part of it. And for some of our members, it may be.'

" 'It's very much about race,' said Jumoke Balogun, an African-American senior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, at a recent roundtable sponsored by The Kansas City Star and KCUR-FM.

" 'If you look at it, it's a Democratic year,' she said. 'You have an unpopular president. You have John McCain, who's messing up in some ways. But you have Obama struggling to win people over.'

"Nationally, about a third of white Democrats and independents harbor at least a partly negative view of black people, according to the recent AP-Yahoo News poll. The whites linked them with one or more unfavorable adjectives such as "violent," "boastful" or "irresponsible."

"In Iowa, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas in September accused unnamed Republicans of using "code language" to convince Midwesterners that Obama is different from them.

"Gov. David Paterson of New York said he thought he heard one.

" 'I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention” a 'community organizer.' They kept saying it. They kept laughing.'

"So will race matter in Missouri next month?

"Said Democratic consultant Steve Glorioso, an election veteran for 36 years:

" 'I don't think I'll live long enough that race won't matter.' "

What a sad commentary about this country.  How terrible that in the 21st century some Americans don't realize that the mosaic of colors and cultures are the strength, dignity, and beauty of this nation.