I once gave a talk about racism that was followed by an interesting comment from a middle-aged white man. "You can't seriously imagine that racism is still a big problem in the United States," this man said, "when millions of white Americans are ready to vote for Barack Obama, a black man, for president."
I once did an article on Obama that elicited the following response from a white Republican science professor in a Detroit suburb: "If Obama gets elected President, it would be a big - probably the biggest since the Emancipation Proclamation - step toward race equality in the U.S. If a half-black man gets elected President," the professor elaborated, "we could stop focusing so much on race in this country and focus on other things."
A different essay critical of Obama provoked an angry response from a black man who thought I was African-American. "How can you betray your race like this?" this individual asked. "Why are you undermining a brother with a shot at the most powerful job in the world?" By this writer's estimation, Obama's black identity was in itself sufficient reason for a responsible black journalist to swallow any criticisms of the junior Senator from Illinois.
The racial meaning of "the Obama phenomenon" is an interesting question that merits careful consideration. It is significantly more complicated than my three commentators grasped.
Is there anything positive about the fact that droves of whites are willing to embrace a black presidential candidate? Sure. Forty years ago, as the United States entered the racially turbulent summer of 1967 and the movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" disturbed conventional racial norms by portraying a black doctor (played by Sidney Poitier) dating a white woman (Joanna Drayton), it would have been impossible for a black politician to become a viable presidential contender. Nothing a black candidate could have done or said would have prevented him from being excluded on the basis of the color of his or her skin.
The fact that this is no longer true is a sign of some (admittedly slow) racial progress more than fifty years after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But there are at least three reasons not to get overly excited about Obama's cross-racial appeal from a racial justice perspective.