On beyond civil rights

ABarack Obama presidency could end the Iraq war, transform our national energy policy, revive America's standing in the world -- but please don't expect the first black man in the Oval Office to move us above and beyond the civil rights era. At least that's what Obama himself suggested last Monday in his speech to the NAACP. In a campaign fueled by high expectations, Obama seemed to be trying to lower his audience's hopes that the election of the first black president would be anything more than a symbolic milestone.

"Just electing me president doesn't mean our work is over," he told civil rights activists.

A day earlier, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond drove home the same point but with just a little bit more gusto. Obama's candidacy, he assured the audience, does not "herald a post-civil rights America, any more than his victory in November will mean that race as an issue has been vanquished in America."

Given the, um, audacity of hope, it's more than a little noteworthy that Obama and his supporters are suddenly pushing realism. Are they objectively wrong when they say an Obama victory won't end the struggle for racial equality? Certainly not. But downplaying the symbolism and real-life racial significance of an Obama presidency ignores the fact that it would ultimately challenge the nation's civil rights establishment, and its policies and rhetoric, which routinely question the fundamental fairness of American society.

All of this is particularly interesting given the enthusiasm for Obama's candidacy in some conservative quarters. Anti-affirmative-action activists Ward Connerly and Abigail Thernstrom, for instance, are seeing greater historical significance in an Obama victory than many Obama supporters themselves. To them, large numbers of white voters willing to vote for a black man signals a welcome sea change in whites' attitudes toward blacks. And to them, that means that what they've been saying all along is right: Race-based policies designed to redress inequality and past discrimination have outlived their usefulness. That's an idea many Democrats are loath to accept.

In the meantime, voters seem to be reading a whole lot of racial significance into an Obama triumph. According to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, about two-thirds of blacks and Latinos and just over one-half of whites agreed that an Obama victory would improve race relations. Blacks were the most optimistic, with 23% saying it would make race relations "a lot better," compared with 13% of whites. Similarly, 85% of blacks said an Obama win would be a sign of progress toward racial equality in the U.S.