In the last several weeks, I've been privy to several conversations where someone expressed the opinion that Obama would never be president because of racism.

The first person was a woman who generally votes for Democrats, but who had expressed her misgivings about many aspects of Obama's candidacy. She didn't think she would be supporting him -- but then suggested that most other people's opposition to Obama was based in racism. "America isn't ready for a black president."

I was surprised: I wondered why she herself had substantial criticisms, yet imagined the vast majority of other opposition must have been based in blind animus, rooted in nothing more than skin tone. Did she know that many racists in real life? Or were these alleged large groups of racists more of a guess?

Yesterday at work, a co-worker expressed the same conviction: Obama couldn't win because of racism. And of course Obama himself seems to believe (or want his supporters to believe, anyway) that most opposition will be based in racism, claiming that McCain would be telling us not to vote for him because he "didn't look like all the other presidents on the dollar bills."

I challenged my colleague: Did he really think that racism was the prime reason that people would oppose Obama? Weren't the poll numbers about the same as for the Kerry campaign (who had a similar voting record and policies)? Isn't it possible that most the opposition to Obama is rooted in the same disagreement that opposition to Kerry? If so, then where's this huge "racist" factor?

So my friend reduced his argument to simply saying there were some racists who wouldn't vote for Obama. Well, of course: yes, some racism still exists in America. We haven't found a way of directly reprogramming people's brains yet...

(... and if we did, I'd argue that bad ideas about economics and morality should be the first thought patterns to go, as they do far, far more harm in the USA today than private ethnic animus.)

So yes: Racism is a factor. A rather small one, as I see it; not the whole obstacle course -- a daunting set of hurdles -- as the cartoonist above envisions. Yes, there are some who will oppose Obama mainly because of his race -- and some who will vote for Obama mainly because of his race. (I'd suspect the later number is far larger than the former.) And some will oppose McCain because of his age, and (by implication from the previous) also because of his skin color -- but that doesn't mean the race will be decided by age, either.

We live in different worlds: My friends on the left still talk, until confronted, as though racism is THE main motivation driving people-who-aren't-them, and I tend to believe it's either way down the list for most people, or a slight positive, if it means electing the first black president.

I've pondered why this should be so. I don't really know, but in the end, I've chalked it off to the leftist tendency to view opposition as rooted in moral inferiority and personal badness. They aren't racists, oh no, but certainly most of the people around them are. It's possible they might have a number serious objections to Obama, but certainly few other votes could arrive at those same conclusions.

Am I missing something?

And of course, racism exists in the US. But what are we comparing it to? The US problem with ethnic hatred is tiny compared with its role in other nations. Ask a Korean who grew up in Japan, how it was. Or ask an Algerian in France how it goes. Study and compare the incidence of racially-motivative misbehavior among prison guards in the UK and compare it to the USA. Ask how well Jews or Christians are being treated in Egypt. Study the role of caste (which is linked to skin color, yes indeed) in India. Look into Turkish treatment of Armenians, or Chinese treatment of Tibetans. Then report back.

We're not perfect, and we have a number of nasty stains on our history, but this is one of the least racist nations on the planet today. I should think people who are allegedly concerned with racism should be noticing that, thinking about what factors contributed to that, and wondering how to encourage that good tendency even more.

(Apparently, their answer involves focusing obsessively and exclusively on race, and portraying racial tensions and discrimination as far more prevalent than they are. Actually, that suggests quite a different agenda, doesn't it?)