Obama's history, and America's

DENVER

THE DEMOCRATIC National Convention this year seems especially mindful of history's odometer. The 88th anniversary of women's suffrage was invoked repeatedly at Tuesday's events. A special commemoration of Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign 40 years ago was held here yesterday (which was also the 100th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's birth).

And tonight's acceptance speech by presidential nominee Barack Obama will be held 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" address, delivered at the historic March on Washington.

These last two events obviously resonate. But on that day in 1963, when King galvanized the civil rights movement from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Barack Obama was 2 years old.

Much has been said about how Obama embodies a new kind of politics, not post-racial exactly, but shaped by a far more subtle and complex world than the one King confronted. Newark Mayor Cory Booker, another member of this group of young black leaders, has noted that he has never seen a "Whites Only" sign - except in a museum.

In his speech to the convention Tuesday night, Governor Deval Patrick addressed the change explicitly. From growing up so poor that he slept on the floor every third night and never owned a book, Patrick noted that his daughter has always had her own room and has traveled on four continents. "One generation," he said, "and the circumstances of my life and family were profoundly transformed."

It is the American story, as the convention repeatedly reminds itself - people of modest means bettering themselves through education, hard work, and opportunity. Obama's life history, as described on Monday by his wife, Michelle, is meant to underline the similarities between this black family's achievement and other ordinary Americans who happen to be white.

No one can deny the progress made in one generation. As a basic measure, about 94 percent of Americans told a recent Gallup poll that they would vote for a black candidate for president, compared with only 53 percent in 1967. But Obama's extraordinary rise is just that: outside the ordinary. US Census data released Tuesday show that the black poverty rate is still three times that of whites, and blacks are six times more likely than whites to be incarcerated. The median income for black families was $33,916 in 2007 versus $54,920 for whites.

In the grand sweep of history, Obama's ascendance is rapid and impressive. But 45 years is also a very long time.