As the nation celebrates King, Obama's rise transcends race

Less than two years ago, political pundits debated whether Barack Obama was "black enough" to become president and whether "America was ready" for a person of color to be their leader.

Through most of 2006 and 2007, the answer seemed to be "no."

While a mesmerizing speaker and a media darling, Obama entered the race as an against-the-odds candidate who no one could quite categorize. Neither white nor black voters immediately embraced him. He faced the Muslim question, and then the Jeremiah Wright debacle.

Early in the primary, Obama trailed Hillary Rodham Clinton among black voters, and his blackness - or lack thereof - became a big issue. Not everyone in the black community was enamored by him.

"Forgive us if we don't automatically pledge our votes to Obama and instead make judgments based on things besides skin color - like, heaven forbid, issues," quipped Time magazine's Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates in a 2007 story.

New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch wrote a snippy column titled, "What Obama Isn't: Black Like Me." New Republic columnist Peter Beinart (who is white) said Obama would have to "prove himself" and his loyalty to the black community if he wanted to be president.

Some black Americans questioned if he was truly "one of us," given his white mother and Ivy League education. Even today, some Americans refuse to acknowledge him as the first black president because he's only half black, The Associated Press reported.

The election forced many people, both black and white, to confront their feelings about a black candidate. And as we now know, the majority of Americans were ready to judge a candidate based on competence rather than skin color.

"They grabbed that opportunity to think of race differently," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of political science and African-American studies at Princeton University, and before that, at the University of Chicago. "That's some of the good that has come from this."

Ninety-five percent of blacks voted for Obama, but also 67 percent of Latinos and 63 percent of Asians, 57 percent of white men and 52 percent of white women.

And - in what many political scientists say was key - he won 68 percent of the vote from people between the ages of 18 and 29, who are the most colorblind generation to date.

Sociology experts refer to our current era as "post-racial America."

"Every white college graduate knows a lot of successful black college graduates. Every white lawyer knows a lot of successful black lawyers. Every white doctor knows a lot of successful black doctors. We were operating side by side, and given an opportunity, blacks could do just as well or better than Caucasians. So this generation was making judgment less on skin color than on skills and values. They had a very different attitude," said David Leege, a former political science professor at Concordia University in River Forest, University of Illinois and University of Notre Dame.

Middle-aged white voters looked at Obama differently, too, having seen blacks like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice excel in important political jobs like Secretary of State, which had typically been held by white men.

"Even moderate and conservative whites were thinking, hey, maybe we should judge black people by the individual and not just a group. And it came from a Republican administration not a Democratic administration," Leege said.

It took a while for voters to come around, though. Harris-Lacewell remembers doing a TV interview where she predicted "Obama would make a great vice president." And Leege, too, was skeptical of Obama's chances.

"I didn't take Obama very seriously, initially," he said. "He was an insurgent. He came out of the blue. Insurgent candidates, sooner or later, meet their match. And he was going up against the Clinton machine," Leege said. "Insurgents just don't last that long ... and the organization candidate wins out."

People misjudged not only his campaign, but the shift in American attitudes. While the infamous Willie Horton ads used by George H.W. Bush in 1988 successfully divided the races, Obama wooed voters with his message of inclusion.

The American public, by now, was tired of party politics and poor governmental response to issues like the economy, the war on terror, and Hurricane Katrina. They liked Obama's message that we all need to pitch in and solve these problems together.

While on the campaign trail, Obama's carefully chosen words focused on what America wanted, not on what he or the Democratic Party wanted. And that message gave the American voters hope, and the belief that they could change the status quo, political scientists said.

"If he sticks to that principle, that it's about what's best for America and not 'me' or the Democratic Party ... then he will not disappoint," said Pastor Francis Senyah, of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Elgin.

Flash content