Why race slipped off the nation's table

Republican presidential contender John McCain got one thing right about Democratic rival Barack Obama during the campaign. He told Larry King that he didn't think race would be much of an issue in the final vote. As McCain put it only "a tiny, tiny, minority" would vote against Obama because he's black. This was not just McCain campaign puffery to tout his credential as a play it straight on race guy. Race was never the factor in the campaign that many thought and some hoped that it would be. McCain took it off the table and Obama with this his race and issues neutral pitch and appeal made sure it stayed off the table.

More than a 100 days into the President's term he's made sure that it stays that way. In February, Attorney General Eric Holder lambasted Americans for being cowards in not talking about and dealing with race. Obama, in a mild back door rebuke at a press conference, softened the tone and reminded that racial confrontation is not his style or his way. In another press conference, Obama shrugged off a question about race by simply saying that any racial back patting about his election "lasted about a day.

Obama's relative silence on racial matters has done much to continue to shove them to the nation's backburner. This was amply confirmed in an April New York Times/CBS poll. It found that Americans by big margins said that race relations are good, and more blacks than ever said the same.

Obama's race barrier shattering historic win in part explains the increased racial goodwill. More blacks than ever are truly optimistic that the last vestiges of racial inequities and wrongs are fast disappearing. There's the sense that the still gaping problems of economic and racial disparities are under full frontal assault further buoys that hope.

McCain and Obama's best efforts to make race a non issue in the campaign and Obama's race neutral approach to policy making and statecraft, however, would fall short without the sea change shift in public attitudes. The decade since the Rodney King beating in 1991, the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, and the urban riots in 1992 that followed the acquittal of the LAPD officers that beat King, has been a period of relative racial peace in America.

During that time polls consistently showed that more whites than ever are genuinely convinced that America is a color-blind society, equal opportunity is a reality, and blacks and whites if not exactly attaining complete social and economic equality, are closer than ever to that goal. Though the figures on income, education and health care still show a colossal gap between poor blacks and whites, the perception nonetheless is that racism is an ugly and nasty byproduct of a long by-gone past.

Even the passage by huge margins of anti-affirmative action measures in California, Michigan, and Washington during the past decade, was not simply a case of whites engaging in racial denial or a cover for hidden bias. Many white voters backed the initiatives because they honestly believed that color should never be in the equation in hiring and education, and that race is divisive.

It's is easy to see why they believe that. "Whites only" signs and redneck Southern cops unleashing police dogs, turning fire hoses on and beating hapless black demonstrators have long been forgotten. Americans turn on their TVs and see legions of black newscasters and talk show hosts, topped by TV's richest and most popular celebrity, Oprah Winfrey.

They see mega-rich black entertainers and athletes pampered and fawned over by a doting media and an adoring public. They see TV commercials that picture blacks living in trendy integrated suburban homes, sending their kids to integrated schools and driving expensive cars. They saw blacks such as former Secretary of States Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in high-profile policy-making positions in the Bush administration. They see dozens of blacks in Congress, many more in state legislatures and city halls. They see blacks heading corporations and universities. And now there's an African-American heading the most powerful political spot in the world, the presidency.

At times Obama has been asked whether he will back special initiatives and programs to deal with the racial disparities that still ensnare millions of poor blacks and Latinos. His answer is to acknowledge that the inequities exist. But the best way to attack them is with more and new programs and greater spending on housing, education, and job creation, as well as tougher enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws.

President Obama's diffusing of race is not to deny that racial problems exist and still corrode much of American society. This is enough to insure that America's racial ills won't permanently slip from the nation's table.