Yes, we can celebrate racial progress

Barack Obama might not be elected president.

If he is, he might not be a good president.

But his election would send one extremely good message:

A black person can win the White House.

That's a remarkable transformation for a nation where a century and a half ago most black people were slaves and a half century ago lots of black people were second-class citizens.

OK, so some white folks won't vote for Obama — and some black folks will — simply because he's black.

OK, so a black pal of mine who backed Hillary Clinton says Obama's not black enough.

Too black? Not black enough?

Is John McCain too white or not white enough?

Obama was presidential enough in Thursday night's nomination-acceptance speech from Mile High Stadium, home of the hapless Denver Broncos.

He issued this unifying challenge: "Democrats, as well as Republicans, will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past." He rightly hailed both "individual responsibility and mutual responsibility" as "the essence of America's promise."

Such elevated rhetoric could help this presidential race transcend race. Obama and his supporters could help even more by dropping the chicken-and-egg debate over who slung mud first — and who played the race card first — in this campaign.

That card was staring at us, ugly face up, long before this campaign began and will still be there long after it's over. But it can't keep Obama's nomination from striking a mighty blow against the patronizing myth that black Americans are forever pawns of white oppression.

Some white people who are sick and tired of hearing how racist they are argue that the bad old days were a long time ago.

How "long" is that?

Slavery was outlawed in 1865. Yet Jim Crow was a cruel reality in the South until around 1965. And ours wasn't the only U.S. region where being black meant being subjected to bigotry-based limitations.

This Charleston native attended then-all-white St. Andrews Elementary School. When St. Andrews Junior High was integrated with an initially small influx of black students, some local white parents (but not mine) incurred serious expense to move some of my longtime classmates into all-white private schools.

The hangover from those bad old days means that some will suspect white McCain voters of racism and white Obama voters of reverse racism. Others will suspect racism as the driving force behind a huge turnout of black voters backing Obama by 95 percent or more after backing other recent Democratic nominees by a measly 90 percent or so.

That's a shame. While the indisputably horrendous truth about our not-do-distant history still hurts, so does the lose-lose cycle of too many white Americans wallowing in collective guilt (or collective resentment about being branded guilty) while too many black Americans wallow in collective victim status. To break that cycle, focus again on this encouraging current truth: A black man is a major-party presidential nominee.

And focus on this bipartisan reality: The last two secretaries of state, serving a president from the other major party, have been black and could well have been vice-presidential candidates if they hadn't rejected the possibilities. McCain's running mate might have been a black woman instead of a white one.

If Obama loses on Nov. 4, it might not be due to white racism. It might just be because voters found him too inexperienced or his policy positions too liberal — or just thought McCain would make a better president.

If Obama wins, it might not be due to a massive mobilization of nearly unanimous black voters and an affirmative-action variation by guilt-tripping white voters. It might just be because voters found McCain too old or his policy positions too conservative — or they just thought Obama would make a better president.

But regardless of the outcome, this conservative will always be grateful to Obama for derailing the planned restoration of Clintonian rule — and for proving that America is a much fairer place these days than it was in the bad old days.

Frank Wooten is associate editor of The Post and Courier. His e-mail is wooten@postandcourier.com.