Even in the face of my overwhelming logic, Glenn Loury remains a Clinton supporter. Still, Glenn's intellectual integrity trumps his partisanship every time, and having listened to Obama's speech Loury is massively unpersuaded by the claim that Obama dissed his grandmother — a very damaging claim being enthusiastically pushed by the wingnuts and the more extreme Obama-haters among the Hillaryites.

They completely misunderstand what he's doing ... [Obama is saying] that intimacy can triumph over ignorance, over racism, over racial resentment, over anger, over fear, and over stereotypes: you don't break off with the people whom you love and who love you, because that bond of connection, that intimacy, that human contact, is the basic from which stuff can be transcended.

If you think the nation really needs a "new conversation over race," there might be much worse starting-points than the subtle, nuanced, impassioned dialogue between Loury and John McWhorter