Race is not the only story of Barack Obama’s election, but clearly, it is one of its very important stories indeed. The election of Obama has so many levels and angles that it would take, well, an entire issue of The New Yorker even to begin to sort it all out.

But if you are of a mind to immerse yourself in the racial context of Obama’s election, the racial forces that enabled Obama’s election—a topic that almost always was expressed indirectly during 2008, and almost always by design, on the part of Obama and his foes alike—you really can’t do much better than David Remnick’s article this week.

I have only one thing to add:

O to be in the room when Remnick and Bunk Moreland share a beer in New Orleans.