Ten years ago last month, I wrote a long cover story for the New York Times Magazine titled: “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” The central point of the essay, which featured dozens of black leaders and provoked no shortage of debate, was that Obama’s nomination in 2008 marked a turning point for African-Americans in our public life, from which there would be no going back. Like the Irish and Italians and Jews before them, I posited, a new generation of black leaders were no longer defined by race or confined to representing their community, but rather had taken their place in the mainstream of our politics.

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