I have read enough posts now with claims that Sen. Obama is racist to feel the need to quote something that cites the contrary. I don't want to discuss any other stance issues or debate his legitimacy as a candidate for president, but I think calling him a racist without doing a thorough investigation of his beliefs is rather uncalled for. So I ask: what do you think of this quote from his book "The Audacity of Hope": "I pondered the fact that, according to his own autobiography, [87 year old] Sen. Byrd had received his first taste of leadership in his early twenties, as a member of the Raleigh County Ku Klux Klan.....Sen. Byrd's life--like most of ours--has been the struggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light. And in that sense I realized that he really was a proper emblem for the Senate, whose rules and design reflect the grand compromise of America's founding...." Good point, Chris J. Much to my own detriment, I omitted some of the quote in the middle. Sen. Obama does not justify Sen. Byrd's position on the basis of having been in the KKK...reading my paraphrased quote makes it look that way. He validates it because of Byrd's shift in perspectives over his many years, his respect for Obama, and most importantly, how Byrd now stands to protect against "passions of the moment." Again, I'm not stating this proves anything and I'm sure to some extent this quote was politically charged. But nowhere have I read anything to promote the notion that Obama IS a racist.