Surging Obama campaign suggests US racism on the wane

“I don’t think race is a big deal in this election,” says Mr. Caskin. “I hope it’s not an issue, but I don’t see it and I don’t feel it, and I honestly never thought about it.”

But Josh Pincus, a Chicago architect who supports Obama, says he was recently shocked at a conversation in which several acquaintances used racial epithets while talking about the election and praised putting up McCain lawn signs as being similar to advocating the KKK. “I was blown away,” he says, while watching his young daughter at a Chicago playground. “I just had to walk away.”

Experts on race say strains of overt racism still exist, but not as powerfully as just a few decades ago.

“[Those with racist views] clearly are a minority now and they’re not dispositive of anything – there was a time when they were,” says David Bositis, a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, whose research focuses on issues of particular concern to African-Americans and other people of color. “They can rant and rave all they want, but time has passed them by.”

Despite the academic studies and record numbers of Americans, white and black, who’ve contributed to the Obama campaign, concerns remain that racism could undermine Obama’s candidacy.

Sonia Whittle is a Mexican-American married to a white Republican man. She often picks up the scuttlebutt on the streets of Forest Park, a largely black and Hispanic neighborhood in Georgia. Because of her Hispanic appearance, whites and blacks often think she doesn’t speak English, so she overhears racial prejudices from all three populations. In her circles, she says, race overshadows all other issues at the moment.

“I hear this [racial] stuff every day – it’s real,” she says. “I think a lot of whites are afraid of what’s going to happen if Obama gets elected. Everybody’s real confused right now.”

Ms. Whittle does not think the country is ready for an African-American president. But with the polls continuing to give Obama a solid lead, others disagree strongly. And they’re worried about what could happen if Obama doesn’t win on Nov. 4.

“I think there’ll be chaos,” says Jimmy Gray, a fruit vendor and pastor in Georgia who is black. “There are too many people ready for a new country and a new vision, and you’d see the 50 percent of people who support Obama rebelling against any other government you put in there.”

For many veterans of the civil rights movement, like former Mississippi Gov. William Winter, much more is at stake than an election.

“The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States would be the greatest thing for racial reconciliation and racial understanding that we could have happen in this country,” says Governor Winter. “And I think it would mean so much to us as a leader in the world as well as to be able to point to him as president of the United States.”

Amanda Paulson in Chicago and Patrik Jonsson in Forest Park, Ga., contributed to this report.

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