Obama's color-blind approach appealing.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

A large majority of the young Democrats who cast ballots for Barack Obama do so because his largely "color-blind" approach to racial issues appeals to those who embrace multiculturalism and reject the politics of the old civil rights guard, maintains a political science professor at Duke University, Durham, N.C.

"Obama's message seems to resonate more with a particular generation of African-Americans who are relieved by his stance on race," offers Kerry Haynie, co-director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences and co-editor of New Race Politics in America: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Politics, scheduled to be published in April. "He often leaves race out of it. Removing 'the burden' of race may be a relief for some black people, and it's an idea that may be comforting to a new generation."

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Haynie indicates that Obama's African-American supporters in the 18- to 35-year-old range had their political awakening in the "new black...