Barack Obama announced Tuesday night that he’s ready take on a dirty campaign from Republicans.

Even as he appeared to be sewing up the Democratic nomination, Republican strategists on cable television kept reviving the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Enough of the guilt by association. It’s an old trick, especially against popular black or Hispanic candidates.

We’ve all watched as Barack Obama has had to distance himself from Wright, despite the thirty years of positive service that Wright gave his church and community.

The Republican ploy is almost an exact repeat of the 2003 gubernatorial campaign in California.

Then-Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante was leading by double digits in his bid for governor over actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. But then the far right saw that Bustamante had been involved, 25 years before, with the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, or MEChA, a student-run organization that promotes social and political involvement among Chicanos.

When the mud started to fly this organization went from being an advocacy group for social change to a “Hispanic separatist organization,” as one anti-immigration website called it. The pile-on began from there, and by the end of the summer Bustamante’s lead was gone and Schwarzenegger went on to win the election.

Oddly, guilt by association doesn’t have the same sting when the candidates are conservative whites.

While Bustamante was losing his run in California, former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour was winning his for governor of Mississippi. In July 2003, he attended a function sponsored by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker have also have spoken before CCC conferences. But Barbour, Huckabee and Wicker have not paid any price for their unsavory associations.

I hope we won’t put up with this double-standard any more. And I hope we, as a nation, can rise above our racial divisions.

This is what Obama is urging us to do, and it’s he is sparking so much enthusiasm. For there is a deep longing in this country to “turn the page,” as he says. You can sense that longing among the vast majority of young people who support him.

His opponents may attempt to smear him, but this year, finally, the ugly tactics may not work.

“We know what’s coming,” as he put it Tuesday night. “I’m not naïve.” He added: “The other side can label and name-call all they want,” and they can “play on our fears and exploit our differences.”

Obama is betting that the American people are tired of these tactics.

In this year of change, that would be one of the most welcome changes of all.

Daryle Lamont Jenkins is a writer in Philadelphia and a member of One People's Project, a group that monitors racist groups and individuals. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.