Black and White in America

"To say that black people have made progress [e.g., black American president] would be to say they deserve what happened to them before."
"So, to say [U.S. President Barack] Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president."
"That's not black progress. That's white progress."
"There's been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. ... The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced."
"Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people."
American black comic Chris Rock

Image Credit: National Geographic

In 1958 a Gallop poll concluded that 38 percent of Americans said they might vote for a black presidential candidate. That number changed to a whopping 96 percent by 2012. It was, obviously, white attitudes that changed during that period not the quality of black candidates, leading to a rise in support of the potential of a black candidate for president coming out a winner. The presentation of qualified black candidates simply appeared more presentable, possible as a potential president to whites at that time.

The General Social Survey, is a public-opinion poll that documents changes in white attitudes to racial discrimination. Almost two-thirds of white people in 1972 felt homeowners should be able lawfully to discriminate against potential black home buyers. By 2008 that number fell to 28 percent. When it came to mixed marriages attitudes have rapidly recognized that miscegenation laws were offences against human rights. Still, one quarter of the U.S. white population continued to oppose mixed marriages in the year a biracial black American was voted in as President of the United States.

Old prejudices die a stubborn death shamefully, and among some they never will pass deservedly into history.

2011 Obama family portrait