US voting intentions promise 'post-racial world'

A Gallup/Washington Post poll published in The Guardian earlier this month has suggested that US voters are overwhelmingly ready to elect an African-American as president.

Charting the views of white voters from both parties, the poll suggests views have changed significantly over the past 50 years.

In 1958, only 34 per cent of whites would have voted for a qualified black candidate from their own party; in 2007, 93 per cent indicated they would choose a black candidate.

The issue of race has pervaded the current presidential race. On 18 October Joe Biden, Democratic nominee for vice-president said: “Undecided people are having a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African-American president in the history of the United States of America.”

Although a poll conducted between 19 and 22 October by The Washington Post and ABC News revealed that 90 per cent of those questioned would be comfortable with an African-American as president, versus 50 per cent who would be comfortable with Senator John McCain beginning his term at 72 years of age, many believe that race could nontheless contribute to Obama’s defeat in the November elections.

For 220 years, the United States has elected only white male Christians to the White House, amongst whom only John F. Kennedy was Catholic.

Currently only six out of 100 members of the Senate and four out of 50 governors are from ethnic minorities.

Randall Kennedy, professor of law at Harvard University and the author of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, has anticipated in an opinion piece for The Washington Post that “most black Americans will believe that an Obama defeat will have stemmed in substantial part from a prejudice that robbed 40 million Americans of the chance to become president on the day they were born black.

“They will of course understand that race wasn't the only significant variable – that party affiliation, ideological proclivities, strategic choices and dumb luck also mattered.

"But deep in their bones, they will believe—and probably rightly—that race was a key element, that had the racial shoe been on the other foot, had John McCain been black and Obama white, the result would have been different.”

Other critics have argued that racism is present in both the Republican and Democrat camps. Indeed, Senator Obama’s campaign team has made no secret of their deliberate attempts to reach out to African-American voters.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll also revealed that Mr Obama’s campaign had contacted 56 per cent of African-Americans, compared with 15 per cent of white Protestants.

Conversely, Senator McCain’s team had contacted 16 per cent of African Americans and 26 per cent of white Protestants.

Claudio Simpson, a black third year student at Harvard Law School and a supporter of Mr McCain, finds it difficult to believe that he is an “unwitting victim of subconscious racism.”

Mr Simpson said: “Going on personal experience, I have little faith that America is ready to follow the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and judge blacks not ‘by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’

"How many blacks have evaluated both candidates on the policies and how many are supporting Obama simply because he is a black man?

“How many use 'blackness' as a litmus test for candidates – both Democratic and Republican? Unfortunately, still too many.

“Barack Obama has shattered many of the assumptions America holds regarding the black race, our capacity to lead and to change, and our role within the nation and its government.

“However, until he or, better yet, we ourselves learn to let go of race and racial identity politics we will continue to suffer from the very same sinister force we have bumped up against for centuries. Racism is alive and well in America, white and black, and the true test of this campaign is whether we can call it for what it really is wherever it rears its ugly head.”