Last week Roger Cohen wrote a column in The New York Times in which he used his childhood in South Africa as a way to frame his thoughts about Barack Obama's (to my mind pitch-perfect) speech on race last week. I am afraid that in the United States right now we are going to start seeing a slow bleed-turned-deluge of stories that will allow lots of white folks their excuse not to vote for Obama without appearing racist per se even when their motivation will be not to vote for the black candidate.