Shocked Or Not

I can't say I was shocked when Obama carried Iowa.

But one of my friends at work was. She's black, and a few years older than me. She was floored. In a good way. "I didn't think I'd see this in my lifetime." She kept saying that.

She grew up in the Jim Crow South. Separate water fountains for "colored." Imagine that.

There was an article in the Sun-Times today about how stunned many African-Americans feel.

"We were all just thinking that he would be third when they were showing the early returns on TV," said Betty Wilson, a 50-ish owner of Hairicons, a beauty salon and barber shop in the 6400 block of South Cottage Grove in Woodlawn. "But then they said he was in first. Who would have thought he would get so many votes?

I suspect this is bad for Mrs. Clinton. She had a lot of black support. But some of that support was premised on the idea that Obama couldn't possibly win among whites. Now the air is going out of that idea.

When racial bias became officially taboo, it did not vanish, but it went underground. This makes it hard to know how much of it there is.

Apparently there's less
Than a lot of people thought.
Sometimes it's hard to assess
The changes time has brought.