Race is the festering sore that afflicts our society. It’s a scab, and we’re picking at it again.

It’s been the unspoken aspect of the presidential campaign of Democratic hopeful Sen. Barack Obama. Even more so than Hillary Clinton’s status as a woman, as the Democratic Party, one way or another, stands poised to make history with their nominee.

It’s the color of Obama’s skin that drew the whispers. And his middle name, the same as the deposed Iraqi strongman whom this country went to war against to remove from power.

And his religion. Don’t you know he’s a Muslim?

And his mixed-race background. He’s not black enough, nor white enough.

And then there’s his minister. Bingo! It was with great glee that many pounced on the admittedly hateful comments of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

So Obama met the issue head-on. He denounced the comments in no uncertain terms.

Then he decided to do something else. He decided to talk openly about an issue most of us only whisper about, only talk about in comfortable settings.

No doubt many were uncomfortable listening to Obama’s words about race relations in this country. Many of them the same people who simply are uncomfortable with the color of Obama’s skin.

They continue to parse his every word. His repudiation of Wright’s comments are not enough. They seek more. They demand to know what Obama knew and when, and why Obama did not remove himself from the church altogether.

They are missing the point, the conversation Obama wants us to have about race. They don’t want to have that conversation. They simply are looking for ways to take Obama down. They want to continue to move back instead of moving forward.

This comes from someone who is not nearly sold on Obama. I have my concerns about him. The color of his skin and what his pastor may have said are not among them.

On Thursday I found another reason to like the guy, however. He was interviewed on a local radio show. KYW maybe, where we tune in three, four times a day? Uh, no. The Big Talker? Nope. These headlines were not yet redefined.

Obama appeared on WIP, and the sports-crazed show of Angelo Cataldi and the Morning Team.

How cool is that? The truth is when my eyes open a little after 4 a.m. each morning, the first thing I do is flip on the radio to KYW. I want an update on what’s happened overnight. But when I get into the car to head for the office, it’s usually WIP that you’ll find on the radio. What can I say, I’m a sports nut. I spend the rest of the day flipping wildly back and forth between 610, 1060 and more talk on 1210.

It says something to me that Obama appeared on a sports talk station. What happened during – and more importantly after – the show also tells me something else. It tells me we aren’t nearly done with this race thing, that we’ve only just begun to pick at this scab.

During a response to a question from Cataldi, Obama again referenced his grandmother, who he had talked about in his speech on Tuesday. He described her as “a typical white woman.”

It was like flipping a switch. You could almost feel the electricity surge through the region. Much of the rest of the day on the station was spent zeroing in on those words, what Obama may have meant, and what the reaction would have been if a white candidate had uttered something akin to someone being a “typical black person.”

I don’t think Obama meant anything by the comments. Which is not to say that I think he should have said it, he probably should have used another reference.

But again it proves how much we are hung up on what people say, instead of what they do. Do people really believe Obama fosters some kind of racial animus simply because of the description of his grandmother? Remember, he has already been more than candid in dealing with some of her racial feelings. He has bared sentiments, and inter-family relationships that most of us would never deal with in public, let alone on a national stage.

So let’s keep talking about race, even when it makes us uncomfortable.

If nothing else this week has proven to us we all have a lot to learn, and a lot to talk about.

Obama isn’t going away. Neither is the issue of race. It will continue to be used by many in an attempt to cloud the issue, to muddy the water, to inject lingering doubts about the possibility of this country electing a black man president of the United States.

It's the sore that will not heal. Now we can all go back to picking at that scab.