PRESIDENT OBAMA is in the White House in no small part because he persuaded Americans to see race in shades of gray. He asked hard-liners on both sides of the abortion debate to do the same in a May commencement speech at Notre Dame. Now he is asking the Middle East to also find middle ground.
"Human history has often been a record of nations and tribes - and yes, religions - subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests," Obama said in Cairo. "Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating . . . whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it."
Gray is clearly the defining color of Obama and rarely has such a hue been so welcome. In the last eight years, President Bush painted the world in the most stark black and white terms since World War II. Bush said we were in a "struggle for civilization." He called North Korea, Iran, and Iraq the "axis of evil." He taunted terrorists to "bring 'em on." He vowed to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, is still trying to convince Americans that our enemies are so evil, we should be able to submit terror suspects to "enhanced interrogations" that most of the world defines as torture. This is despite the defeat of his Republican Party and its policies at the polls. In a direct attack on Obama's outreach to adversaries, Cheney said, "In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you exposed . . . one lead that goes unpursued can bring on catastrophe." Cheney does not seem to notice that for all of his bellicosity, the world is still spraying bullets, building bombs, and spewing hate.
Obviously, no one knows if the Obama search for middle ground can work. But it is the only way peace can be found.
Is it no accident that, with Obama's Philadelphia "race speech" in the primaries being a signature moment, that the racial temperature in the United States has cooled. I have mentioned in recent columns that polling shows that majorities of all Americans feel race relations are generally good, and part of it is because in that Philadelphia speech in March of 2008 Obama said, "if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like healthcare, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American." He asked white Americans to understand very real vestiges of racial injustice and African-Americans to "embrace the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past."
He said similar things at Notre Dame, the Catholic university where some protested his invitation because he is pro-choice. Allowing that some views from opposing camps are "irreconcilable," he was applauded several times as he said people should be able to agree on reducing unintended pregnancies, making adoption more available, and giving more support to women who decide to give birth. He asked for "Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words." The need for fair minds was brought home by the murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, who provided late-term abortions in Kansas.
Many antiabortion activists all but justified the murder by saying Tiller was himself a murderer. All that does is fuel the global murderers row.
No one knows if donning neutralizing shades to invoke the nonviolent protests that ended official discrimination against African-Americans and forged victories for freedom movements around the world will solve the Middle East. There is no doubt in a complex world that Obama will, in fact, be challenged by leaders who take him for a fool.
But when Obama gets both a standing ovation in Cairo and affirmations from senior Israeli officials who told the Globe that his speech was "an impressive challenge to extremism," that is an optimistic start.
The new black in politics is a black and white president, a living embodiment of gray, telling everyone that a brighter future begins with the dullest of colors.
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com. 
