These innocent remarks occur even as Obama continues to seek to prevent race from being a distraction to his political campaigns and his agenda.

From The New York Times:

Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, apologized on Saturday for once predicting that Barack Obama could become the country’s first black president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that his race has played a role in his rapid national rise, he has long sought to prevent race from being a distraction to his political campaigns and his agenda.

Three years ago, then-Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware told the New York Observer that Mr. Obama was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”