MACON, GA. — The three deejays spun R&B and hip-hop, with a focus on oldies, party anthems and black artists gone mainstream -- Michael Jackson, OutKast, Gnarls Barkley.
These were carefully chosen common denominators, songs that black and white club-goers might agree upon in 2008. And, in fact, the two races were here in equal measure on a Friday night, dancing shoulder to shoulder at this upscale club in the heart of the old Confederacy.
The dancers, about 50 of them, were too young to remember April 1968, when angry blacks rioted here after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. They were too young to recall Feb. 18, 1970, when 4,000 whites rallied against desegregation just across the Ocmulgee River. They were too young to remember "Machine Gun" Ronnie Thompson, the white mayor from 1967 to 1975 who threatened that his police would "shoot to kill" rioters on his watch.
To club-goers like Nathan Hicks, the mixed-race dance floor at Club Envy represents a departure from all that.
"You're seeing a very unique time, locally and nationally," said Hicks, 30, a lawyer who is white. "Nationally, you have the introduction of the first serious black candidate for president. Locally, things have been divided for a long time."
But now, he said, Macon has something new: "a generation that doesn't know that racial divide."
Political observers are wondering whether younger voters, unburdened by ancient racial biases and baggage, might make an impact in November's presidential election. In a handful of Southern states, such voters could help Democrat Barack Obama mount a serious challenge to Republican John McCain, potentially canceling out lingering prejudices harmful to a black candidate.
The trio of deejays at Club Envy have been throwing multiracial dance parties like this for a few years around Macon, and they are aware that they have tapped into the forces that have been reshaping racial attitudes -- even in the South.
"It was bound to happen," said Rory Tibbals, 30, who is white. Tibbals, a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, calls himself DJ Tagg. "You go to school these days, you're in a mixed class. You go to work, it's integrated."
"I swear," added Dallas Jackson, a black 33-year-old who spins records as DJ Roger Riddle. "Every year, kids get better about race."
