Chris Matthews, after watching President Obama deliver his first State of the Union Address, said something I'm sure he thought was positive and profound, but which was both factually and morally wrong -- and which demonstrated just how deeply unaware he is and how irrelevant his comments are.   What did he say?

He said this:

"I forgot he was black tonight."

And this:

"I was trying to think about who he was tonight, and it's interesting. He is post racial by all appearances, you know. Y'know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. He's gone a long way to become a leader of this country and past so much history in just a year or two."

And this:

"I was watching, I said, 'Wait a minute, he's an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, president of the United States, and we've completely forgotten that tonight, completely forgotten it.'... You don't think in terms of the old tribalism, the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard."

I understand Matthews was trying to say something positive, but the remark reveals that he has no clue about what Obama being president means to many black Americans, and to white Americans who have long fought for racial equality. (There are some subtexts to his remark -- What, for instance, made Matthews forget Obama was black, given that Obama's appearance, dress, manner of speech and policies have not changed in the past year, much less during the speech? Why does Matthews imagine that "forgetting he is black" is a compliment? -- but that's another discussion.)

Why Matthews is wrong

The words of historian Robert O. Self come to mind:

We are not post-racial: What is most important about Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is that for the first time in the nation's history, to get us out of a jam we turned to, and trusted, a black man. And, frankly, who better? For who has worked harder for, invested more in, and believed more passionately in this nation than its black citizens? None. Perhaps it high time that, collectively as a nation, we came to realize that.

The fact is that it is vitally important that Obama is black. The fact of Obama being black makes his presidency immediately

My daughter

and permanently a positive step of historic proportions for America.

My first reaction to Matthews was that he reminded me of Stephen Colbert's parody of the conservative lie "I don't see color," but my second thought was that none of us should ever forget for a moment that President Obama is black. Saying the words "president is" and "black" in the same sentence is profoundly meaningful, both for many of us individually and for our nation.

Our history

Why?  For many reasons, the first being historical. The persistence of the black "freedom struggle," dating to the 1620s, is one of the defining elements of the history of this nation.

It is impossible to over-state the significance of a black president in a nation with our history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, racial segregation, racial hatred, racial violence and even a Civil War fought, in part, over racial issues.  A black president makes a powerful statement about our national maturation.  A black president represents at least the partial fulfillment of what seemed like an impossible dream and of the American premise and promise.

This is something to contemplate and to celebrate, not to forget.

The decisiveness of the first black president's victory strengthens its meaning.  Obama carried Virginia, once the home of the Confederacy, a place whose laws just five decades ago would have made the interracial union of his parents illegal.

"I really do not believe what is going on," said Beverly J. Kelly, 77, told MSNBC when Obama won the election. "Three hundred years ago we were not even a human being. We were like a cow or something that could be bought and sold."

But we don't have to go back 300 years to grasp what an enormous leap forward we have made, to glimpse the immense beauty of the change that has come.  "Just a little more than 10 years ago," Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin told TIME magazine, "it was inconceivable to any of us that we would see an African American win a national party's ticket and then compete effectively. It's mind-boggling."

There are Americans alive today who were born when lynching was common in the South, when Major League Baseball, the U.S. armed forces and the vast majority of American public schools were segregated. They were teens and young adults before the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, before Rosa Parks made her stand, and before Martin Luther King, Jr. orgnised the Montgomery bus boycott.  Many were parents before they saw a black member of the Supreme Court and in the president's cabinet -- grandparents before the nation had its first black governor in 1990.

Henry McGee Jr., 75 -- a professor of law who has spent a lifetime on the cutting edge of efforts to integrate the African-American community into mainstream U.S. society, -- has seen much progress, but he never dared to believe he would see a black person in the White House.

"I wouldn't have even thought of it and I'm pretty imaginative," he told MSNBC. "There was totally a situation of racial apartheid in the United States when I graduated from college. Just in one person's lifetime ... the country has traveled centuries."

When John McWhorter was 3 years old, his grandfather, who was a printer, made a calendar with a photo of John and the words "U.S. PRESIDENT, 2010 A.D." In 1968, that was cute, but the humor was grounded in irony -- it was funny because everybody "knew" it was impossible.  It's 2010, and while McWhorter isn't president, another black man is.  What everyone knew was impossible is now real, and were we all to follow suit with Matthews' "forgetting" that the president is black, the astounding meaning of this transformation would be lost.

As McWhorter wrote upon Obama's election:

A black man is president, and black Americans seem to feel like it really means something. As such, we will expect a sea change in the tone of what is considered the authentic black voice. Pollyanna, no. But it will be positive and constructive-as Obama has been on the topic of race-in the way that anyone would assume of a group that truly seeks progress.

Many have supposed that what black America needs was a second revolution in how white people think.... and now, even without a revolution, much of what black America needs to happen will be a reality.

Champions of the black American political community hinted at what the first black president means: Rep. John Lewis called the Obama win a non-violent revolution; Rep. James Clyburn said he would now be able to tell school children with conviction that they can be whatever they want in life.

Obama, himself, recognized that his election was at least as much about the nation as it was about him, that it indicated that many of the nation's oldest, most powerful prejudices are dying.  He pointed out the struggle of 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, who cast an early ballot for him in Georgia:

"She was born just a generation past slavery, a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky, when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons, because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin... Through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change."

Although Matthews may not be able to understand the power of the moment -- the "moment" that continues a year later -- Obama's opponent clearly did.  John McCain offered his admiration for Obama for "inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had so little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president."  He went on:

"This is an historic election and I recognize the special significance it has for African Americans.  And for the special price that must be their's tonight....  We both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation's reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still have the power to wound."

While we may (and should) quibble with McCain's description of the stains of racial injustice as all being "old" and his assertion that it is only the "memory" of racial injustice that causes today's wounds, we have to acknowledge that even he saw

at least a bit of what the first black president means to America.

My son

Condoleezza Rice, too -- another conservative Republican -- spoke as if she was touched by what transpired on election night and understood its historical importance. The United States, she said, "continues to surprise. It continues to renew itself, to beat all odds and expectations. You know Americans will not be satisfied until they form that more perfect union."

Slavery was not -- could not -- be ended in 200 years, much less in a single generation. Jim Crow took nearly another 100 years to wipe out. Our journey toward real equality, after three generations of struggle and sacrifice, is still not over.  But this moment and our first black president mean much has been accomplished and the future looks ever brighter.

Our present

The significance of a black president, however, is not merely historical and not merely symbolic.  The fact that the president is black changes the real world right now.  It is changing the very nature of our democracy, striking what may eventually prove to have be the deathblow to identity politics.  It is also changing the basic framework of what it means to be a black American, making real an identity that could previously only be imagined -- as victor rather than victim, as holders of a full American birthright.

As Jesse Jackson told TIME, Obama's election "shows that there's nothing else we can't be. There's no university we can't be seriously considered to lead. There's no bank we can't be considered in if we have the right credentials."

Our future

The fact of -- and the recognition of -- the president as black over the next three (next seven, if we're lucky) years, will reverberate throughout the black community and much of the non-black communities, inspiring pride, optimism and a belief in the ability of all Americans to achieve their share of the American premise and promise.  The fact of -- and the recognition of -- the president as black allows a new generation of young people to realize their enormous potential and imagine a world where their dreams can come true.

My younger children are growing up with a black man as president, as leader of the free world, as the most powerful man onthe planet.  They are growing up with Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia on their televisions and laptops. We learn best that to which we are first exposed, and it will be impossible for the next generation to think about race the way we do.  Not only will they see a black man occupying the highest office, but they grow up with a much broader idea of black authenticity. The notions that the blackest is the streetest, and that black people in high places inevitably stop being "really black," will fade.  To black children, the fact of a black president says, "yes you can," to white children, it says "yes they can," and both messages are as vital as they are positive.

"Our country is showing its forward evolution, that the color of one's skin cannot inhibit one's ability, and that's worthy of celebration," said Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

Ironically, it is the recognition and embrace of fact that the president is black will move us much closer to the end of our long tribalism than Matthews' forgetfulness ever could.  It is the recognition and embrace of the fact that the president is black will make most Americans more American.

The president being black changes what it means to be American, changes our national identity, and those changes will make concrete differences in our near and long-term future.

Sisters

An example:  When my eldest son was in high school, he brought home very poor grades despite having an IQ of 130. When I challenged him on it, his reply was "Dad, if I show them how smart I am, they'll say I'm trying to be white."  It was no different for his mother when she was in high school 30 years earlier:  as young black woman, her academic achievements cost her friendships and earned her abuse.

As McWhorter wrote:

From now on, however, there is a ready riposte to being tarred as "acting white" for liking school: "Is Barack Obama white?"

It's the perfect smackdown-not even the most hardened black teen will disown the heroism of the first black president....

Just watch: in 10 years, black people suffering this treatment now will notice that their younger siblings and cousins are not-and Barack Obama will be the reason.

Both the president and the First Lady will have this effect, daily demonstrating the beauty, power and pride in flexing intellectual muscles, in learning and knowing, and in the use of reason.  The Obama's are showing that being very, very smart is very, very hip.  (Little wonder, then, that his most virulent opposition comes from the most stridently anti-intellectual parts of our population.)

The unspoken progress

There is yet another important effect the Obama presidency is having, although the media and pundits have mostly avoided the

Siblings

topic, and that is the message it sends about multiracial families.  I've been part of an multiracial family now for 31 years, so it touches me personally and deeply.

The fact that Obama is the son of a multiracial marriage, the fact that Obama speaks with great love for his multiracial family, the fact that Obama is obviously so comfortable in his multiracial heritage, that fact that Obama is so at ease in his own identity, and the fact that most Americans accept him as he is, is another great -- if uncelebrated -- leap forward from our ugly recent and distant pasts.

America has long viewed love across color lines as shameful, disgraceful, even disgusting.  In 1961, the year Barack Obama was born, nearly 30 states had laws barring marriages between people of different races, the vast majority of whites (close to 100% in Gallup Polls) disapproved of black-white marriages, and those who dared to cross the color line were considered racial degenerates.

In the 1970s, my future wife endured public abuse for dating me, a white kid; in the '80s, she was called a "traitor" for having married me. In the '90s, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and TV star Montel Williams were both attacked for having white wives, and Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson took heat for their love. During the same time, Spike Lee won fame with a movie denigrating interracial love, broke off relations with his own father because of his father's marriage to a white woman and ripped into a University of Michigan black student for dating a white student.

Sociology textbooks long warned that children of mixed marriages would be maladjusted and would face harsh societal discrimination from both blacks and whites, and last year we had the Louisiana court official who refused to issue an interracial couple a marriage license because, he asserted, multiracial children suffer too much and never amount to anything.  Except, maybe, president of the United States?  Or an Academy Award winner, the greatest pro golfer in the world, or an Olympic swimmer?

(Really, it's obvious that their mixed-race heritage has kept these people from making something of themselves:  Derek Jeter, Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Carmelo Anthony, The Rock, Mariah Carey, Rosario Dawson, Thandie Newton, Vanessa Williams, Vin Diesel, Kate Beckensale, Soledad O'Brian, Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Malcolm X.)

The president's -- and America's -- ease with his racial heritage may signal that this country is reaching a greater of maturity and coming to accept its own cosmopolitan identity. We are not post-racial, we are multi-racial.

Being first

It may be a matter of timing. As the first black president, Obama's race is an enormous and beautiful symbol of the progress of America, of the partial fulfillment of the dreams and work of millions of us older Americans and of the new hope and aspiration of millions of younger Americans.

The second black president will still have positive effects in America, but his or her race will not carry the symbolic power that Obama's does.

As an aside, the first female president will have much the same effect as the first black president -- her sex will be vitally important to the nation as a symbol of fulfillment and progress and as a beacon of hope for millions. And we'd better not, for an instant, forget that she's a woman. (I'm hoping that when we finally get a president from a working class family -- setting aside the complex case of Lincoln -- we'll see another important symbol created.)

Matthews' error

Do we give Chris Matthews props for being "honest" and "vulnerable," as some have asserted? Perhaps. But we must recognize that his "honest" and "vulnerable" remarks were insensitive and reveal him to be profoundly ignorant about one of the most important moments in our history and question whether he is qualified to comment on it.  If nothing else, we must stress how deeply wrong Matthews is.

At this moment, a this early stage of his presidency, before any major policy initiatives pass and take effect, the race of the president may just be the most important thing about his presidency.  We must not forget it.