^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

You've heard it said many times, and you'll hear it said many more times before the 2008 elections are done: "Is America ready for a black president?" A new survey suggests that the answer may be a clear yes.

According to a February Gallup Poll, only 5% of those polled admitted that they would not vote for an otherwise qualified black presidential candidate. If we were to take this poll at face value, all of the other frontrunners would face greater resistance:

• 11% of those polled said that they would not vote for a woman, which would include Hillary Clinton ;
• 24% of those polled said that they would not vote for a Mormon, which would include Mitt Romney ;
• 30% of those polled said that they would not vote for a candidate who has been married three times, which would include Rudy Giuliani ; and
• 42% of those polled said that they would not vote for a 72-year-old candidate, which will include John McCain as of August 2008.

But these polls only measure professed bias. Subconscious bias is much trickier--particularly now that it's no longer socially acceptable to be an overt racist. Harvard University's Project Implicit attempts to measure subconscious race and gender bias, but personally, I'm not sure it's the sort of thing that an online test is going to pick up on.

Is there any barometer we can use? I don't know of one. I have noticed, anecdotally, a strange divide between Mississippi Democrats--white Democrats enthused about Edwards, black Democrats enthused about either Clinton or Obama--which is borne out in last month's straw poll conducted in predominantly white Madison County, Alabama, in which Edwards was in first place with 33 percent, Clinton second place with 31 percent, and Obama in distant third at 20 percent. But this is hardly conclusive; there are many factors that could be contributing to these sorts of numbers, such as Edwards' Southern accent or his Carolina heritage.

We should be very careful in the way we analyze elections like this. I'm reminded very much of the 2003 Mississippi statewide elections, in which 29-year-old white Republican bank employee Tate Reeves edged out veteran 47-year-old black Democrat state official Gary Anderson in the state treasurer's race. One commentator on a local television station solemnly remarked that Tate's victory proved that no black candidate could win in a racist state like Mississippi--an analysis that would have been more meaningful if recent poll data had not indicated that 68% of Mississippians had no idea who Gary Anderson was. (I'm embarrassed to say, gentle reader, that I was part of that 68%.) But because Anderson lost, and because so many people in the state Democratic Party are absolutely convinced that racism was the decisive factor in the election, some black candidates might think twice about running for statewide office--reducing the odds that a black candidate will actually win one of these elections. In other words, "no black candidate can win in Mississippi" can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Did Jesse Jackson lose the 1984 and 1988 primaries because "America isn't ready for a black president"? Did Colin Powell choose not to run in 1996, in part, because "America isn't ready for a black president"? Racism will be an obstacle for Barack Obama and any other presidential candidate of color, no question. It would be naive to say otherwise. It may even play a decisive role in this presidential election. But it doesn't have to.

And for all the talk in the national press about the risks racial identity might play for a non-white presidential candidacy, few people are talking about the potential benefits. Mississippi, for example, is 36% African-American. If black voters were not dramatically underrepresented at the polls, Mississippi would be a blue state--but because of the disparity in voter turnout, Mississippi is currently one of the reddest states in the country.

If a young black presidential candidate can energize black voter registration by suggesting that this is not a process run by and for middle-aged white men, then that candidate's election could have a radical demographic effect on the outcome of future elections--in Mississippi, and throughout the country. Because in the final analysis, the election of the first non-white president--whenever it happens--won't really be about the candidate or the presidency. It will be about the kind of country we're prepared to become. And that new kind of country--the kind of country that will elect a president who isn't white, or who isn't male--is a country whose citizens, citizens of every ethnic and national background, just might feel that our political system is worth participating in.

See also:

• Race Relations a Central Issue in the First 2008 Presidential Debate