I suppose it was inevitable that media folk should at first insist on describing Barack Obama as the first African-American president-elect. Even now some are still pinching themselves, finding it hard to believe that this is so. The other day MSNBC’s Chris Matthews confessed as much on the air during his “Hardball” program.

My hope is that in time we can look beyond Obama’s race and focus instead on his more significant attributes like his intelligence, calm and tact. We are going to quickly find that it isn’t his race, but rather his singularity as a human being, that will be most telling as he takes the reins in January.

He will be The President, not the black president, and it would be mighty helpful if those who write and talk about him finally let go of the race adjective that, by its nature, tends to separate him from the varied mass of people he represents.

What we’ve surely learned is that the words we use do matter, and the words used by reporters and pundits can either emphasize the separateness implied in mentioning Obama’s color, or ignore it and move on.

The election itself revealed that a large number of voters were well ahead of the political reporters. While reporters sliced and diced the electorate into groups by race, ethnicity, and gender, most voters had already leaped across the barriers and chose to vote for someone they simply believed was the best candidate. The categories became irrelevant on Election Day, but until now the press seems to have missed the point.

What is revealed is the basic fact about our countrymen, that we are of many opinions, many pasts, many hues, and our president-to-be is not The Other, but rather as American as mom’s apple pie. And what a tasty, surprising pie that is.