I don't know that left or right of the center are really the terms to use. On some issues the black community as a whole is perhaps further to the right than the white community as a whole. I suppose I'm looking at this through the strong parallels to the situation of the Moroccan, Turkish and other Middle-Eastern, African and South-Asian minority groups in Europe - just because their votes are massively going to the left to such a degree that they entirely dominate the left-wing parties in many cities (though rarely outside the cities), doesn't mean they're actually all that left. It just means the left is more inclined to sympathize with them, and sympathize with their focus on rooting out racism, be it institutional or other, while glossing over the issues within the minority communities themselves. Which of course is a shameless generalization, but like any generalization there's still truth to it.

So I really should support those from said minority groups who aren't afraid to stand out from the group, stating the hard truths and bluntly pointing out their group's issues - it's just some of them have a tendency of overcompensating and becoming so extreme that one can hardly take them seriously anymore (Alan Keyes comes to mind, not referring to the author of this article here). Or else they find themselves hijacked by people wanting to use them for their cause, and tainting them by association (Ayaan Hirsi Ali coming to mind here).

And yeah, Obama may be black, but he didn't grow up in the socio-cultural group that is African-Americans, although you could argue that since his wife did, he's to some extent been assimilated into it. But as you point out, if he managed to be elected, then it is because he isn't truly African-American, and managed to reap the African-American vote while not being required to be an African-American politician, in either the Jesse Jackson mould or the Alan Keyes mould, neither of which would stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected. If he had been born in Chicago to a black family that had been there for two centuries, while otherwise having quite the same personality and talent, he would have had to walk quite a different path to ever even approach his Senate seat, nevermind the Presidency.

Yeah, this column out of context doesn't really make that clear...

Indeed, but that's not an easy sell.