"No race holds a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength," said Carol Boyce Davies, professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center, at the faculty forum "Race and the 2008 Presidential Election" in Sage Chapel, Oct. 21.

Co-sponsored by the Africana Studies and Research Center and Cornell United Religious Work, the forum brought together five Cornell professors and Angela Y. Davis, political activist and a Cornell visiting professor, to discuss the role of race in this year's election.

Race is the factor that makes this election unprecedented, said James Turner, professor of African and African-American politics and social policy, and scholars are naturally preoccupied with what this means politically and sociologically.

Turner told the audience of about 75 that there are various ways to incorporate a candidate's race into a campaign: "Do you use it to challenge the status quo, do you ignore it by deracializing the campaign, or do you try to transcend it by appealing to unity and strength through diversity?" Turner asked. Barack Obama's campaign, he said, has adopted the transcendence strategy.

Turner attributed Obama's broad appeal to his embodiment of a second-generation immigration success story. The Obama campaign's gain of broad youth support is especially commendable, he added.

Boyce Davies emphasized the global significance of this election and the international attention it attracts, and said the United States is in the midst of making history. She also commented on the importance of viewing "white" as a race category and not a "normative identity."

Panelist Edward Baptist, associate professor of history, said that Abraham Lincoln with his Emancipation Proclamation and Lyndon Johnson, speaking in favor of the National Voting Rights Act of 1965, have been the only two U.S. presidents to risk their political careers for gains in African-American civic participation and equality. He also addressed traditional presidential "cowardice" in the face of majority white voters and white privilege, noting that Obama must win the majority white vote to be elected.

A professor of government and a political scientist, Elizabeth Sanders discussed possible outcomes of the upcoming election. Obama's liberalism and democratic ideology, in addition to race, will factor into whether Obama wins or not, she said.

Davis asked the audience to look to history as they follow the campaign and the election. "We live in a country whose population has not acquired the habit of taking historical memories seriously," she said. "Histories never leave us for some inaccessible place in the past. They are a part of us; they inhabit us."

Laura Janka '09 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.