To say that the election of Obama solved the country’s racial problems, or proved that the days of racial prejudice are behind us, is to regard Barak Obama as the proverbial “Magic Negro.”  It’s a lot more complicated than that, and the time of self-congradtulation about our purity and lack of prejudice is not yet arrived.

In doing so, many good but blind people are becoming better people.

Yes.  Any many other not-so-good people were outed and now we know who to stay away from.  I had some wingnuts, who were sure the only reason liberals were voting for Obama was because he was black, attempting to convince me that he was really white so I had no reason to vote for him.  That kind of twisted, racist logic stuns me.

Of course, in our new post-racial country, anyone who points out racism is racist because they brought it up.  We;re not allowed to talk about race anymore because doing so makes you racist. Stephen Colbert’s “I don’t see race” schtick is Truth in my small town.

I had some wingnuts, who were sure the only reason liberals were voting for Obama was because he was black, attempting to convince me that he was really white so I had no reason to vote for him.

Also, some folks are convinced that ‘mixed’ people are even scarier than blacks. Some of those people who told me, “Obama isn’t really black… his mom was white”, were I think trying to make that point.

A hell of a bonus, b/c it’s embarrassing that the “Land of Opportunity” is so far behind our contemporary nations in having women or POC run the place.  We’re supposed to lead.

Women, yeah, (there have been a lot of female Prime Ministers and Presidents) but I don’t know of any other western country that had a non-white as President or PM, unless I’m mistaken.

Peru had an ethnic minority (Japanese) as President, that’s the only one I can think of.

Plenty of other countries have had leaders of recent immigrant extraction even though they’re racially indistinguishable from the rest of the country, and the US hadn’t even come close on this score until Obama.

Well, there’s the current prez of Bolivia, Evo Morales, too. Still I think you’re right Ben, ethnic minorities being elected presidents of democratic nations is probably still a fairly new thing.

Have to agree with you completely.  We have indeed come a very long way since when I grew up (white) in segregated Jim Crow Oklahoma in the 50s and 60s.  Perhaps we too have now made it to the mountain top to see the Promised Land before us, but we are not there yet and I seriously doubt that we will actually get there in my lifetime.  Of course I said the same thing about electing a black president last spring.  I can only hope that I am wrong about this as well.  I teach classes on race and ethnicity and spend a lot of time wallowing in statistics and reports from governmental and nongovernmental bodies.  The information contained there, while better than in the past, is not encouraging.  Race continues to distort and debase every area of our culture and society.

I wonder if the discrepancy between white and black respondants is due in part to people not talking a certain way around black people anymore?

Maybe, though in my admittedly limited experience (I’m a white male in a white-collar job), the blacks are still pretty aware of who doesn’t like them.

Should point out that Evo Morales, who is Indian and therefor not white, is not in fact a minority.  Bolivia is about 80% Indian.  He is, however, the first Native president in the history of the country, despite a revolution in 1952 which nominally overturned the existing racial hierarchy.  That worked about as well as Brown v. Board of Education.

Plenty of other countries have had leaders of recent immigrant extraction even though they’re racially indistinguishable from the rest of the country, and the US hadn’t even come close on this score

Martin Van Bueren was a child of immigrants. His first language wasn’t even English.

However, the Whigs never did demand to see his birth certificate.

The interesting part will be after the left gets through cumming about having a race minority president and the hoopla dies down.

Will we have made a good (lucky) choice or will be be lamenting the day we elected the first Affirmative Action president?

Also, is it just more or does it seem like it is easier for women to get to the top in Parliamentary system than a Presidential one?

Count me amongst the people who do not believe the CNN poll.  Not even remotely.  If this poll is true than I want to see the poll questions.  Guided poll perhaps?  Either a specific set of people were targeted for questioning or the people questioned do not fully understand what MLK’s dream was.  My guess is the former.  I think the sample was skewed somehow.  I do not trust CNN polls.

Ben, while it is pretty cool that Martin van Buren was elected despite his family still having a strong Dutch-American identity, as far as I can tell, his family had been in the US since the 1600s. Still, though, I would have expected that the US would have had more leaders like Martin van Buren, given our “nation of immigrants” reputation. Sarkozy is of recent Hungarian and Sephardic Greek Jewish descent. There’s at least one or two latin american countries that have had an Arab-American leader….

Then again, had the “macaca moment” not happened, we may well have had george allen whose mother is French Tunisian running for president.

Such a background doesn’t seem to be much of an impediment to running for governor (eg, Cuomo, Dukakis, Blagojevich), one hardly sees any presidents outside of the WASP establishment. Even JFK’s Irish-born relatives had long passed out of living memory by the time he was born.

There is much work to do.

I’m not sure what your endgame would be here.  The abolishment of all racism?  Good freak’n luck.  The Palin mobs will fade with Palin herself.  The Regan-worshiper and his predecessor, the Nixon-worshiper, have been dying out for years.  But there will always be another fruity flavor of crazy for the local yokles to cling to when someone loses a job or the price of gas goes up or you have to pay your taxes.

If in twenty years we see a Hispanic run for President or another woman or an avid Foosball player or a Mormon, and that individual just happens to be on the wrong side of the political spectrum, you can expect the same level of stupidity and vitriol because these idiots will always exist.  Always.

We can work to marginalize them or to quiet them, but we’ll never be rid of them because there is just this certain segment of society that glorifies itself in the ability to remain ignorant and foolish.  There’s a certain political angle that revels in failure and grows strong by sucking the common sense and good fortune out of others.  So long as we have misfortune and superstition, we’ll have idiots blaming scapegoats for all their problems.  Maybe they won’t be blaming black people, but they’ll be blaming somebody.

That’s true, Tyro. Our Presidents have tended to either be WASP or Scots-Irish redneck, two of the longest residing groups.

In fact, this will be the first time we will not have a WASP as either President (a black guy) or Vice President (an Irish-Catholic).

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If I was asked the question, I certainly wouldn’t answer that we’ve achieved the dream in its fullness, but I can actually understand the people who feel we have.

We’re not there until nobody cares, and can’t honestly remember why anyone did. Of course, by that standard, the problem will literally erase itself, because nobody caring will also mean more intermarriage until the idea of “mixed race” is as odd as the idea of a “mixed hair color” marriage, and anyone who really meets today’s standards of “white” or “black” or “asian” will be a statistical outlier rather than a social class.

But at the same time, there are fewer and fewer “can’t happen in my lifetime” categories. Oscar winner? Astronaut? Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? CEO? Secretary of State? Governor? Police Chief? Top recording artist? American Idol? Children today do, frequently, play together. People do, frequently, worship together, work together, live as neighbors and friends.

Are the percentages right? No way. Are the opportunities equal? Hardly.

And yet, zifnab is absolutely right. If we ever do “get there” with regards Dr. King’s dream as it applies to race, it will still be necessary for someone else to have another dream about whatever it is that we all have gotten together to separate ourselves next. But that’s what dreams, and dreamers, are for.

Caren, I’m thinking DogBreath=DodgeRam.  Ignore.

Robert Banks Jenkinson, PM of GB from 1812-1827, was a quarter Indian.

Didn’t know that. Interesting!

I think of Dr. King’s Dream as an ongoing journey in America, and I think progress has definitely been made.  And I believe tomorrow will signify the biggest step towards the realization of that dream that we’ve seen in my lifetime.

That said, we ain’t there yet.  But man, have we come along way.  And the fact that we have been able to get to this point makes me hopeful for the future.  I think racism will never die completely, but I think with each generation, it gets a little less powerful.  The Millenials show of force in this election makes me feel very hopeful about our future.

A hell of a bonus, b/c it’s embarrassing that the “Land of Opportunity” is so far behind our contemporary nations in having women or POC run the place.

Not completely accurate.  As much as there is to be critical about our country, we are ahead of the curve on at least one front here.

America is the first western nation on the planet to elect a person of color as it’s leader.  Not one European nation has ever done this.

Martin Van Bueren was a child of immigrants. His first language wasn’t even English.

WHAT THE CHRIST?  Martin Van Buren grew up speaking Dutch, but he was less a “child of immigrants” than George Washington or Abraham Lincoln: his family had been in New York since the 17th century.

Ah, just saw previous comments re: POC elected.

OK, America is the first Western Nation in modern history to elect a person of African descent to it’s presidency.  Additionally, I believe British PMs aren’t elected by the people.  So Obama is also the first person of color to be elected by the public (yeah, I know, Electoral College) to be the leader of a western nation.

JupiterPluvius—

I meant it figuratively, in that he had a strong Dutch identity. He was not a WASP.

Though I concede that in New York being Dutch makes you as much of an elite as being English in the rest of the colonies would have.

I wonder if it’s just that blacks have somewhat lower expectations of whites than whites do of themselves?

I mean, if you grew up with racism leveled at you all the time, you find it positive and incredible that almost half of white americans were willing to vote for a black guy for president. If you didn’t, and aren’t personally a lunatic, you compare Obama to the McCain/Palin clown show and find it incredible in the negative sense of the term that slightly less than half of all whites voted for Obama.

I mean, seriously. Obama ran a near-perfect campaign, while McCain’s campaign might have been slightly better if he’d loudly interrupted one of the debates demanding a “little nap.” I’ll buy that the dream is here when whites have the same OMGWTF reaction to McCain/Palin that every other ethnic group did.

Whites who were pushing the race issue were all liberals and this was the one big success they had. So, why would they ever say that the game is over and give up all that power?

Shorter DogBreath:  IT’S A TRAP!!!!!
Alternate Shorter DogBreath:  Deh Tooker Jobs!!!!

I certainly believe that Obama’s election was an important step forward in racial equality, but this single event by no means should be taken as proof that racism no longer exists. In the South, for instance, most states voted for McCain. I don’t know if there is any data suggesting that race was a primary reason for their choosing of McCain over Obama, but it was probably a factor.

It’s not actually surprising that Martin van Buren grew up speaking Dutch even though his family had been here for generations.

Everyone speaking English in the US is more recent than people think.  My mother began her teaching career in 1923 in a town where the public school’s classes were conducted in German because that’s the language everyone in town spoke.  My mother was fluent in German so she found it no challenge.  There were also towns where the schools were taught in Swedish or Norwegian.  I suspect other languages were represented in like fashion elsewhere in the country.

I agree that the Voting Act is still necessary - I don’t think it’ll ever be not-necessary - but I also believe MLK’s dream has come true.  The people who fought him at out of favor, and now, out of power.  We must fight for it to remain that way, and check over our actions to make sure they affirm what we believe in.

Everyone speaking English in the US is more recent than people think.  My mother began her teaching career in 1923 in a town where the public school’s classes were conducted in German because that’s the language everyone in town spoke.

My grandparents were taught in Dutch in their public schools in northwest Iowa in the 1920s.

I mean, if you grew up with racism leveled at you all the time, you find it positive and incredible that almost half of white americans were willing to vote for a black guy for president. If you didn’t, and aren’t personally a lunatic, you compare Obama to the McCain/Palin clown show and find it incredible in the negative sense of the term that slightly less than half of all whites voted for Obama.

Good points, and clearly an indication that racism isn’t dead.

At the same time, I have to look at it as progress against racsim.  10 years ago, 40% of white people wouldn’t have voted for a black candidate.  25 years ago, a black candidate sure as hell had no shot of even being nominated.  50 years ago, a black person would likely have been shot the moment they announced running for POTUS.

We aren’t there yet, and we’ve still got a long way to go.  At the same time, I’m very proud of how far we’ve come in such a short time.  I think MLK is smiling at his country right now.

Everyone speaking English in the US is more recent than people think.

I grew up in a part of Pennsylvania with a large PA Dutch population, which is actually German (Dutch from Deutsch, not actually Dutch). My best friend in high school was from a family that had been in the area since the late 1700s, and her grandparents did not grow up speaking English and spoke English with an accent. Not a regional accent. A non-native speaker accent. I think it’s pretty much radio and then television and then post-war mobility that got everyone speaking English, particularly in those very insular parts of the country.

I believe the first daily newspaper in the country was in German, as well.

As for the poll, I’d be interested to know how the questions were worded, but do you think some of the difference could be the different starting points? As in, were blacks so pessimistic a year ago that it seems like we’ve made great progress, but whites haven’t moved that much in an absolute sense? I ask this in part because Ta-Nehisi Coates was on Fresh Air today (the whole thing is really good, if you didn’t catch it) and he said the election of Obama and his performance in predominantly white states restored, to a certain degree, his faith in white people. That’s an oversimplification of what he said, but it colors how I see these results.

Or what Llelldorin said.

People in this country cannot even come to an agreement on whether our new president is black or biracial—his actual racial composition or his race “assigned” by our culture.

Doesn’t Obama himself get the ultimate authority on this one?  He self-identifies as a black man with a biracial heritage, so it seems to me like that’s the correct answer.

I wonder if there’s a subtle inner push on those answers based on caring about how the other race feels?

What I mean is, any white who isn’t racist themselves (and many who are, but of the weak racism that overgeneralizes perceived cultural differences) is appalled by racism and its toll. And they feel compelled, not only by honesty, but because they don’t want to look like privileged wankers, to admit we still have a long way to go.
Blacks, on the other hand, may be well aware that there’s still a lot to be done, but feel that not only is the change underway, but that they should reward the white people who campaigned, donated, and voted to get Obama into office, by giving the answer that says, essentially, “We know most of you mean well, and it’s good.”

this single event by no means should be taken as proof that racism no longer exists. In the South, for instance, most states voted for McCain.

Yeah, if you don’t vote for the black guy, you’re just a racist asshole.

I don’t know if there is any data suggesting that race was a primary reason for their choosing of McCain over Obama, but it was probably a factor.

Yeah, and blacks carefully weighed the foreign policy statements, domestic initiatives, etc. before carefully making a choice. (/sarcasm)

I don’t think Obama was the type of person Dr King had in mind when he dreamed that one day a black man would be elected to the office of president of the USA. The reason I think this is a good look at his goverment work he has done so far.

The Man Barack Obama is going to make history because he is the first Half WHITE man ever elected to the office of President of the United States of America.
He is famous for doing nothing. He has a terrible record in the senate with his voting decisions and often never voted at all. He is afraid to take a firm stand on any issue. He has a pattern of neglect of duty often voting, absent, present, sick, not present and no vote as his choice. Also was always late for sessions. He didn’t do shit as a senator. He promised the people of Illinoise he would complete his full term as senator serving the people of this state for his full term if elected. He LIED. He abandoned the people of Illinoise and his word means nothing. People are blinded by the color of his skin, which his is tan-brown not black! He tries not to offend anyone because he is already starting to run for re-election . He won’t be able to make hard decisions because he is afraid to lose votes. He is a LIAR! He was well taught by his mentor-preacher what is Wright and wrong in this world.
That’s why he is always so vague when he says anything. Never any details, never firm statements. He only wants to make Nice Nice. He is already backing out of the promises and things he pleadged to do if we the people elected to hire him for the top position in our government. Go to the senate voting history page and see his voting record for yourself. Many senators operate the same way. No wonder little ever gets done and what gets done takes so long. We are all in big trouble!

I’m one of the 54% of white Americans who does not believe that racism in America is a thing of the past.  As I previously posted elsewhere, well, have a look at this chart.

In Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi - notoriously, traditionally the most racist states in the Union - despite the miserable record of the Bush Administration - bin Laden un-caught, wars un-won, swelling deficits, the growing gap between the ultra-rich and the working class, $4/gallon gasoline, collapsing banks, evaporating 401Ks, unemployment surging, wages sinking - despite all that Obama still won less than 15% of the white vote in those three states.

Keep in mind that, when comparing average income, these states rank 45th, 46th and 50th, so there was no self-interested reason that these white voters should have so strongly preferred the candidate who had lost track of how many mansions he owned and who offered tax cuts to millionaires, to the candidate who offered tax cuts for the working class.  If they voted with their wallets they’d have been more pro-Obama than the national average.  Instead he got less than fifteen percent of their votes, and it’s not because they differ with his position on health care.

I’m 54 years old, and I live eight hundred miles South of the Mason-Dixon line.  As Caren noted in comment #2, I know a few people who wouldn’t ever say “n****r” where a black person might hear, oh heavens no! but when it’s just me and them, only us white folks in the room, it’s a different story.  All I can say on the plus side is, that bunch, as a whole, get older and closer to the graveyard every day, and I do believe the younger generations aren’t nearly as rabid.