In the chick flick "Something New," an African-American career woman tries explaining the "black tax" to her white boyfriend. It means, she says, that black people have to be twice as smart and work twice as hard to be considered equal.

The boyfriend sort of gets it, but his patience grows thin. One night he points out that she's not exactly lagging behind -- she has a great education, owns her own home and is on the partner track at a top firm. What, exactly, did she have to complain about?

You'll never understand, she says, and they break up. Then, surprise, each comes around to the other's point of view and they reunite for the happy ending.

All problems solved in 90 minutes, cue Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney singing "Ebony and Ivory" -- that's the movies for you.

It sure isn't politics.

Last week I interviewed some political humorists about the presidential race. Did Barack Obama, as the first black nominee from a major party, present any special risks to a profession that likes to push the envelope? Mostly, they didn't think so. But several readers called or wrote to say that the mere question was why they wouldn't vote for Mr. Obama.

"Anyone who criticizes him will be accused of racism," said one indignant fellow.

In his mind, there was no black tax. There was only a black dividend -- an unfair advantage that would make people tiptoe around Mr. Obama because he's black, even as they took pot shots at John McCain's age.

Apparently, the gentleman has never watched Fox News.

Still, it was an example of America's racial problem cutting both ways. Mr. Obama addressed this head-on in his speech following the Rev. Jeremiah Wright debacle.

Blacks have been historically disadvantaged to the point that many have never made up the lost ground (see the persistent gap in test scores and income), he said, and this has bred a strain of resentment. At the same time, he noted, many whites have seen the erosion of their own jobs and communities (see shuttered factories and home foreclosures), belying the American dream in which each generation does better than the last, and this, too, has bred resentment.

If we are to progress as one nation, he said, we need to stop feeding these resentments and get busy solving common problems. The outcome of this election will depend, in part, on whether voters agree with him on that, or believe that he can do anything about it.

Race is not a big part of Mr. Obama's campaign. He doesn't come out of the civil rights movement, and he doesn't frame most issues through a racial prism. That won't stop some folks from projecting race onto whatever he says and does.

That goes for his wife, too. The nation doesn't know Michelle Obama very well yet, and it's hard to say what role race plays in how she is perceived. But while color in this country is arguably less of a factor than in the past, it can never be counted out.

Mrs. Obama is not the quiet, smiling helpmate that some voters still seem to want in a first lady, Hillary Clinton notwithstanding. She is a tall, strong woman from a working-class family, who earned herself an Ivy League education and a high-powered job, whose fashion sense evokes Jackie Kennedy and who tends to speak her mind.

Certain privileges are supposed to accrue from that kind of resume -- and do, in many cases. But not that long ago, a similarly accomplished black woman told me that she still had to put up with store managers tailing her through the aisles as if she might steal something. There would always be those who viewed her with suspicion.

Mrs. Obama didn't help herself when she uttered the now-infamous quote -- "For the first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country" -- that has been used repeatedly to impugn her patriotism and, by extension, her husband's.

Asked about it last week on ABC's "The View," she explained what she meant to say: that for the first time she was proud of the political process, because it has drawn in so many first-time enthusiasts.

It didn't come out that way. But she got an unexpected lift from first lady Laura Bush, who said she knew what it was like to have every sentence pounced on and misinterpreted.

Mrs. Obama no doubt has learned the necessity of choosing her words more carefully. But no matter how careful she is, she will still be viewed by some critics the way the protagonist in the movie was viewed by her boyfriend -- way ahead of the game, yet nursing unfounded resentments. Why else would the Internet hum with baseless rumors about an alleged video of her making derogatory remarks about white people, even though no such video has ever surfaced?

Being no dummy, Mrs. Obama has to know this is an Achilles heel.

"Of course I'm proud of my country," she said on "The View."

"Only in America would my story be possible."

There's been some discussion of America entering a "post-racial" age, the result of social advances, multi-ethnic immigration and intermarriage producing offspring like Tiger Woods, who calls himself "Cabalasian" (Caribbean, black and Asian) and Mr. Obama, born of a black father from Kenya, a white mother from Kansas and raised by white grandparents in Hawaii.

Mr. Obama's candidacy shows we've come a long way in that direction. But when Fox News labels his wife "Obama's Baby Mama" -- which the Urban Dictionary defines as "the mother of your illegitimate, and usually accidental, baby ... a new trend of modern 'gangstas' " -- it shows we still have a long way to go.