Ake, ther'e an unwritten assumption in your opening post - that those who voted for McCain did so for reasons of race (and therefore assume that it would be hard to solve the "race problem"). I have heard or read nothing anywhere to justify such an assumption.

More to the point, as has already been intimated above, this is to a large extent a vote for a "post-racial" world. Obama certainly talks and behaves that way so far.

While the majority of the posters in the thread (myself included) do not belong to the "post racial" generation and many of us have to be conscious of the prejudices of our own upbringing in order to cambat them. The future does not belong to us, thankfully, but to the generations that follow - like my daughter, who told me off for using innocently the word "ch*nky" in reference to a Chinese takeaway meal. I had to laugh, even as I cringed.