In becoming the first black American to claim a major party’s nomination, Obama has reached a milestone that many felt was at least a generation away. But the convention, like Obama’s overall campaign, thus far has dealt with race lightly, obliquely, or often not at all.

Prominent black lawmakers addressed the Denver crowd Wednesday without mentioning the campaign’s racial dimensions, which they eagerly and emotionally discuss in private. Americans watching TV might assume otherwise because convention commentators often discuss race. But they are drawing from interviews and other sources, not from the speeches that are vetted by the Obama campaign and that serve as a record of the four-day event.

Obama is “running as a candidate who happens to be African-American, not as an African-American who happens to be running for president,” said Chris Lehane, a spokesman for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.

The reason is simple, campaign strategists say. The more Obama is seen as a black candidate, the greater the risk that some white voters might reject him.

In Denver, the omissions are notable because several convention events have celebrated Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unprecedented achievements as a female presidential candidate.

The tone will change Thursday, when Obama accepts the nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a coincidence that could hardly be ignored. But when Obama resumes campaigning Friday in Pennsylvania, party insiders expect him to revert to his practice of soft-pedaling race: Acknowledging its role in American society, when asked, but rarely bringing it up on his own, and never using it as basis for seeking people’s votes.

“No one is going to forget that Barack Obama is half black,” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said Wednesday. But in seeking his state’s crucial white, working-class voters, Rendell said: “I wouldn’t emphasize it. I’d say, ‘Look, right now I think the only color you’re concerned about is green,’” a reference to families’ economic worries.

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