There is no doubt that Sen. Barack Obama has become some sort of American phenomenon. People faint when he talks, cheer when he blows his nose and cry when his speeches are put to music by the lead singer of the Black Eyed Peas. A new lexicon is born giving us words as self explanatory as "Barackstar" or "Obamania" and as esoteric as "Obamatopoeia" (the word for a really good Obama impression). Clearly, there is excitement behind this campaign. As a black man on the verge of a possible democratic nomination, Obama is also a racial phenomenon, and with this come many questions. Debates across the country are being waged about what kind of black candidate Obama really is, of what importance his race is, whether he represents a unique persona in political history and whether he has ended identity politics. Last Monday night, a panel of Prof. Ibrahim Sundiata (AAAS), Prof. Jacqueline Jones (HIST), Prof. Mingus Mapps (POL) and Prof. Peniel Joseph (AAAS) examined these exact topics.

Sundiata began the evening by looking at Obama from what he called the most rarified position on the panel. As a historian and scholar of comparative race and ethnicity, Sundiata wanted to look at Obama from a racial standpoint.

"First I want to examine whether Obama is a kind of end of America's racial nightmare, or just an evasion," Sundiata said. "Some writers have argued that Barack Obama is a viable candidate because he does not represent the African-American spirits. Several writers say that the reason that whites have been enamored of him is because he is not representative. The question is, does Obama's elevation represent the confrontation with the American heritage of slavery and Jim Crow, or is it an image of transcendence palatable to the white mainstream?"

It may seem confusing that a black politician born in the United States could be accused of not being a true African-American, but Sundiata offered examples of people who believe just that. He spoke about the work of a black writer, named Deborah Dickerson, who in early 2007 went from talk show to talk show claiming that America was avoiding dealing with its racism by supporting Obama. She believed that America-by embracing a black man who was not a descendent of slavery, who did not experience the same suffering in his heritage, but was born to recent immigrants-was not supporting a true African-American.

"I find this all fantastically interesting," Sundiata said in response to this idea. For Sundiata, there really is no question that Obama, despite his mixed heritage and recent familial immigration, is a true African American. "Obama is behaving exactly as African Americans are told to behave. He is a black man; he says that over and over. He is a black man of mixed heritage. That has been federal law since 1920 and U.S state and or colonial law since around 1663 immigrants to the United States, if they were black, became African-American. He is simply following the playbook."

After Sundiata shed light on Obama's heritage, Jones took the stage to talk about what his race means in a historical context. She said that the Obama candidacy has special resonance because his main opponent is a woman, which sets the stage for a contest between two of the biggest advocacy groups in society. She also reminded the crowd that this is not the first time the country has been in the throes of this type of battle.

"In history, the notion of civil rights was something of a zero sum game," Jones said while standing in front of a projection of Frederick Douglas and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "Many groups believed that if other groups get their rights, then they would have less claim to their own rights. It's as if rights are finite, which of course we know is not how it works."

Historically, alignments along these causes have been relatively straightforward. Women generally would fight for their suffrage, while blacks would fight for their civil rights (of course there were plenty who fought for both). Jones said that today, however, the reasoning behind identity politics has become somewhat blurred.

"Identity is of course socially constructed," Jones said. "It is not as if these physical characteristics has some essential claim on a person's personality, let alone their politics. What is the basis of identity politics in an era when Condaleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas wield a great deal of power?" Jones continued by pointing out the obvious differences between women like Elizabeth Dole and Anne Coulter versus Hillary Clinton.

Prof. Mingus Mapps (POL) spoke after Jones to demonstrate that despite being illogical, identity still remains a driving force in politics. With a woman and a black man vying for the democratic nomination, many voters are casting crossover votes, but through a serious of power points, Mapps made it very clear that identity voting is prevalent. The graphs clearly showed that despite crossover voting, Obama still does better with Clinton among men and blacks, and Clinton still does better than Obama with women and whites. Obama's candidacy may be transcendental in many ways, but it still manages to fit a basic historical pattern.

Prof. Peniel Joseph (AAAS) concluded the panel, also saying that Obama fits into a historical context, albeit in an pioneering way.

"Obama is really not a race transcending black politician," Joseph said, "but a politician that was actually fused into the Civil Rights and black power movement in innovative and interesting ways."

Joseph continued to say that what Obama has done is to merge aspects of both Civil Rights and the Black Power movement.

"When you think about the black power movement, even though it is racially specific it was utilized as a template by other racial and ethnic groups for social and political struggles for economic and racial justice," he said citing the New Left and the Chicano movement as examples.

Joseph ended the discussion with a prediction.

"I will be a prognosticator historian," he said. "What does Obama's candidacy mean for black politics? I think it means something very, very important. The timber of his voice and his asthetics remind us of Jack Kennedy. It was an ironic thing as a historian to be watching Ted Kennedy say that the heir to Camelot was a black man. So JFK had an illegitimate son and it was Barack Obama. That's what they were telling us. We are seeing a candidate who is creating a synergy between what we usually see as opposing poles of black politics.