I was running in place on the elliptical trainer (the kind of activity that would seem to imply that the evolution of the species had reached a dead end, or was, perhaps, moving backwards), listening to the Rail and Road Report on NY1 when I heard: “And if you’re taking the Taconic, there are reports of some black guys out there so you want to be careful.”

Sure, I thought: black guys on the state parkway. That would be scary. Set phasers on stun. Until I realized that the reporter had said black ICE, a special and treacherous feature of East Coast winter driving.

It was one of those subliminally racist moments, the kind they sang about in Avenue Q. Race has been in the air a lot of late, thanks in part to the candidacy of Barack Obama; the Clintons have opted for a subtle approach in reminding people that the man isn’t white (Bill mentioning Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, Hillary digging in on Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement in the last debate) while the Swift Boat types on the right are already roiling the internet waters with rumors that he’s a closet Muslim (his middle name is Hussein, you know). And did we mention that he was black?

One of the reasons Obama’s victory in Iowa was such a stunner is that the state is so damned white, many pundits thought voters would follow suit. And after Hillary’s victory in New Hampshire those same dispensers of conventional wisdom said see? We told you. But since then, as he has romped to victory in 11 primaries and counting, winning support among whites of all ages, and both sexes, a lot of us have held our collective breath. Could it be that a sizable number of Americans really just don’t care anymore?

I have no particular expertise here. I grew up in a couple of small towns in Northern California that were probably 95% white. The few black families there lived in their own communities, outside of town (and you can imagine what the less enlightened townsfolk called those communities) and I didn’t really encounter a lot of blacks until I moved to San Francisco, and then Oakland, and now Brooklyn — where the neighborhood I live in is still majority black (though growing whiter by the day). I am still subject to unconscious race reaction, making a note to myself when everyone on the bus, save me, is black.

But my kids, who grew up in the same cities mentioned above, are coming from a different place entirely. When my son told me about his friends at his Brooklyn middle school, he never mentioned what color they were ( don’t think it registered), and I was always surprised to meet these black, brown and Asian kids. Our daughter, who was born in Paraguay, identifies herself as non-white and left a mosh-pit slam-dancing party last month “because everybody was so white.” She likes to give me a hard time for having only dated white girls.

Sharon Begley wrote an enlightening piece in Newsweek entitled How Your Brain Looks at Race. Evolutionary scientists let us off the hook by saying: some racial reaction is hardwired. Early man didn’t wander far and when he encountered people who looked different than him, they generally wanted to kill him. But time, and experience, can override that wiring.

“Many whites who profess to be race-blind unconsciously associate dark skin with negative traits and ideas (evil, failure, dangerous), and light skin with positive ones (joy, love, peace), shows an assessment called the Implicit Association Test,” writes Begley. “When white Americans see photos flashed so quickly that they can be detected only subliminally, the amygdala, which signals ‘Watch out!,’ is significantly more active in response to black than white faces. If the photos appeared long enough to be processed consciously, however, the amygdala quieted down and the rational, thoughtful prefrontal cortex perked up. You could practically hear the cortex telling the amygdala to pipe down and stop being a racist jerk.”

Over the next eight months I suspect we will experience something like this, collectively, as the nation tries to wrap its mind around the reality of a black party nominee (not to mention a black president). It may get treacherous at times, and downright slippery, but I think, in the evolutionary sense, we are moving in the right direction.

I suddenly recalled being in high school and trying to leave some literature about Shirley Chisholm (a black congresswoman who ran for president in 1972) at a barbershop in Auburn, California. The barber responded by taking a rifle down from the wall. Chisholm is dead now — but I bet you anything that barber is, too. In fact, it’s probably not even a barbershop anymore. For all I know they sell candles there now, the kind you’re supposed to light instead of cursing the darkness.