"...white folks would never think to say that John Edwards is 'the right kind of white person.' "

On the other hand how about stuff like:

October 01, 2001 (CNSNews.com) - Former President Bill Clinton was honored as the nation's first black president Saturday at the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Awards Dinner on in Washington, DC.
.........................

Talk about "the right sort of" in this context can be seen in two ways. One is as an expression of lingering racism, and that is a valid enough way. But another is as evidence that a racial and racist stereotype is crumbling in the face of a reality that does not accord with it.

Obviously if Obama gets to be president that wouldn't mean that racism is dead in America (and any attempts to claim that it did would deserve to be challenged). But it would be a powerful symbol that it had been dethroned.

And if he turned out to be an outstandigly good president, which seems pretty likely, by the time he came to leave the White House the symbolic change might have helped achieve a real change, with racism being seen not so much as wicked as ridiculous.("Ridikulus" as they say in Hogwarts when dealing with boggarts.)