I teach civil rights and am therefore a little more than typically interested in the racial and gender issues implicated in this year's Democratic nomination process. In my classes, which I have been conducting for about twenty years, sometimes in large cities and sometimes in small towns, I rarely meet a person who publicly speaks in racist terms or seems to have no understanding of the brutal history of racism in America. People generally "get it" although I am sure they may be less willing to share biases in such a forum (usually sponsored by the workplace).

I am also quite aware that we have come a long way and that even the most racially prejudiced among us are not so sinister as those of years past.

But what an interesting thing it has been to see, hear, and read about the reactions of "whites" to Obama. What used to be socially hidden, has begun, more and more as the season progresses, to come out in political commentary and reactions of everyday people to his candidacy.

Never mind the voting statistics indicating that the more rural and south you look, the less popular he is among white voters. People are speaking right out loud about what can only be interpreted as "white pride," and are revealing themselves to be "offended" by expressions of African-American anger.

Even feminists are doing it when they get wrapped up in Hillary-mania and forget that women and minorities have usually fought together for justice, not as foes.

Don't get me wrong, people have every right to be offended by whatever they want to be offended by. But I confess to feeling very uncomfortable when I hear a college student outraged by Senator Obama's description of his own grandmother as a "typical" white person who held what, in her generation, were certainly were "typical" racial fears and prejudices. I could see the young man today on Hardball looking visibly angered and hurt by this outrageous insult to his race (white) when he tried to get Senator McCain to denounce the Obama remark. (McCain, to his credit, didn't take the bait).

It has arisen most openly in the Reverend Wright debate in which white Americans seem visibly shocked that black Americans, especially older ones who lived under Jim Crow, still harbor lots and lots of resentment. What a surprise!

I truly believe that a "conversation about race" is a good thing. But the one I saw moderated by Brian Williams the other night was hardly thorough. It was a forum for folks like me who seek understanding and change.

The real conversation, involving Americans from all walks of life, is apparently much farther away, and will be difficult indeed. One of the first steps in such a conversation is for people to listen "outside their own autobiographies" as Steven Covey says. When I do that, I find it pretty difficult in this country to worry about my "white identity."

Maybe it will take an African-American President to get people to be less "uptight" (I show my age) about really hearing our brothers and sisters across racial lines.

As a Bruce Hornsby song says: "That's just the way it is...things will never change...but don't you believe it." Let's work to make that last bit of Hornsby hope justified.