The New Nation - Internet Edition

FOR black Americans, the road to political inclusion that has allowed Democrat Barack Obama to make bid for the US presidency first time ever in the history in most expensive election for the White House has been 'long and difficult'. After the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in 1863, a series of laws and amendments to the US Constitution allowed Hiram Revels to be elected to the US senate in 1870 in Mississippi as the country's first African American congressman. But only a small number of black Americans have entered the US senate or become state governors since then.

According to latest media reports, ending their electrifying campaigns the 47-year-old Illinois Senator Barack Obama and his 72-year-old Republican rival Arizona senator John McCain were in their constituencies on the polling day and cast their ballots. 'Change we need' slogan against continued failures in foreign policy for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and serious domestic economic disaster during the eight-year rule of President George W Bush, undoubtedly, helped Obama to have an edge over McCain who even had to say - 'I'm not President Bush'.

The lingering impact of the racial issue was vital to decide the fate of the presidential election, particularly as Obama was far ahead of his rival because the vast majority of 73 per cent of the total US voters are white against 12 per cent black and 13 per cent Hispanics coming from Latin America besides 2 per cent Asians. Rev Jesse Jackson set his own bids in the context of a process that began in 1954 with a landmark Supreme Court decision on public school desegregation that laid the groundwork for political equality and civil rights. Obama, in fact, ran the final lap of a marathon that has lasted decades.