15 NOVEMBER 2008, Page 27

Black and white qualities?

Sir: In his, to my mind, patronising remarks about Barack Obama (‘his blackness seems skin deep’) Charles Moore seems to regard ‘the intelligence, the historical sweep and the ability to understand more than one perspective’ as particularly white qualities (The Spectator’s Notes, 8 November). It does not seem to have occurred to him that if these qualities are ‘the opposite of those of the ghetto’, they are also the opposite of those of the Republican vicepresidential candidate and, it seems, a fair body of her supporters. Does he think Mrs Palin’s whiteness is also skin deep?

Peter Weitzman

London W11