Much has been made of Barack Obama’s historic victory over John McCain for the presidency of the United States. The rise of a black man to the highest office in the land is indeed a major event in our history, but have race relations in the U.S. really made the advances we think Obama’s presidency signifies? Think again.

Although dear ol’ Lincoln enacted the Emancipation Proclamation around 150 years ago, and the civil and voting rights acts  passed just under 50 years ago, most would argue that we haven’t made real progress until now. This election has been touted by many as the final and real end to the racial politics that prompted the civil war, but let’s check our assumptions.

Compare the map above, which appeared in The New York Times and shows which states went for which candidates in this month’s election, with the map below, which depicts the Union states in blue and the Confederate states in red (and the gray states didn’t exist):

Has much “changed”? Instead of a Union and a Confederacy, we now have a Blue America and a Red America. The divide is the same, the semantics are different.

Those who see the election of Barack Obama as indicative of a triumphant “change” in U.S. race relations are mistaken. If anything, this election points to the contrary. The idea of a black man becoming president is still unacceptable in the states that once called themselves Confederate.

The Civil War did not end because the southern states accepted their intolerance. Rather, the brute force of the Union states made southerners abandon their bigoted practices. These southerners are in the same situation today—but this time, the votes of the majority (as opposed to guns and ammo) are providing the push for them to accept a racially just outcome.

Celebrating the election of the first black president in U.S. history should not be overshadowed by these realities, but should give us some pause for what lies ahead. Not everyone is pleased that Barack Obama is our new president-elect and these folks will be watching and criticizing (and undermining) his every move. Obama may have won the election-night fight, but he still has a four-year battle ahead of him.

We can only hope that his term in office will bring about much needed political and economic change, but also, and most importantly, a substantial transformation that will end this country’s long history of racial intolerance.

Tags: Barack Obama, civil war, election 08, John McCain, mccain, obama