'I forgot he was black'

So, on Wednesday night as many people did, I watched President Obama's State of the Union address. I thought he did very well. Afterwards, I watch MSNBC with my parents, and Chris Matthews was sharing his opinion on the speech. After lots of praise for the President, he said the following:

"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. I mean it's something we don't even think about. I was watching and 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."

I remember him saying that and also remember initially, for a brief moment, taking it as a positive thing (which he intended it to be!), but a few minutes later, a thought dawned on me. I was thinking to myself, Why do we have to forget that he's Black? Before I could really give it much thought, I got distracted and forgot about it. Then yesterday, I was reading random stuff on the internet as I usually do, and I ran across this article. Now, although I do think about race issues quite often, I don't usually start discussions about it because honestly, to me it just seems like a complicated conversation that never ends. With that said, I still don't think race should be something that's ignored. The more we talk about it in an open and positive way, the more accepting we become of each other.

The article I found basically addressed my initial thoughts after Chris Matthews' statement. I agree with the article's author in the fact that his statement (which I'm sure many people have thought the same way before) makes it seem like the fact that you forget President Obama is black makes you take him more seriously as a leader. But at the same time, I believe that statement came from a positive place, with positive intentions, because last year at that time his race was an issue, but this time it really wasn't.

Does his remark, and ones similar to his that have been said lately, bring us closer to a "post-racial nation" or does it take us a few steps back?

Are we transcending race?