POINT OF VIEW/ Yasuko Takezawa: Can Obama unite racially divided America?

This New Year's Eve, the countdown party in New York City's Times Square will be even more exhilarating than usual, with excited throngs eagerly welcoming in a new year of change and hope. The excitement is about Barack Obama's induction into the White House in less than a month as the United States' "first African-American president."

What helped to lift Obama out of political obscurity into a rising star in U.S. politics was his electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

This passage in particular defined his core message: "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America: There's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America: There's the United States of America."

Why did these words strike such a strong chord among Americans? The background behind why many Americans have developed a strong sense of crisis about the country's deep racial divisions is not well-known, unlike that behind America's political split.

The United States has long held to the "one-drop rule"--people with any trace of African ancestry (one drop of black blood) are basically considered black. Thus, no African-Americans, not even the best and brightest like Obama, can escape racial discrimination.

But being African-American usually entails another important aspect, one with which Obama has had little connection: inheriting from black families and communities the collective memories of their historical suffering and survival.

During his presidential campaign, Obama denounced the incendiary remarks made by his one-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who stated, among other things, that the U.S. government invented HIV/AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color. Obama criticized these remarks for inciting racial hatred.

While many whites saw such claims as ridiculous, most people in the black community have heard the theory that HIV/AIDS was created to wipe out blacks. There is a historical background to this belief that the great majority of Americans may be unaware of.

For four decades from 1932 to 1972, the U.S. government conducted a study of 399 poor black men who were thought to have syphilis and compared them with a control group of uninfected men. In this Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the experiment conducted by the government was not to cure the infected men, even after the discovery of penicillin, but to simply observe the natural course of the disease.

Throughout the study, none of the men were informed of the true design of the experiment. The study continued until it was exposed in the media spotlight.

There are many other such facts in American history. Slavery and lynchings are not the whole story.

More than 40 years have passed since the Civil Rights Act was enacted to eliminate racial discrimination and the start of "affirmative action," or positive steps to provide equal opportunities for blacks. But the economic gap between whites and blacks keeps widening. According to the 2000 census, the net wealth of the average black household is less than one-tenth of that of the average of non-Hispanic white households.

Meanwhile, discontent has grown among many whites over "reverse discrimination" and the question, "How long do we have to continue paying compensation for discrimination by past generations?"

Both neoliberals and conservatives who want to maintain their vested interests have advocated a shift toward a "colorblind society," in which no consideration is given to minorities based on race and gender.

In addition, a growing number of young people belonging to minorities are refusing to be labeled by their race or gender. But in a colorblind society, it is impossible to identify discrimination or improve the situation without recognizing racial categories. Conflict and division are quietly deepening over how to deal with the negative legacy of the past and issues of race.

The United States is facing many urgent challenges, including the economic crisis and the war in Iraq. The question now is whether Obama, who has urged Americans to transcend race, will be able to repair such divisions and unite the nation through his leadership.

Having struggled with his conflict of identity after a long and lonely journey to find a place he can belong to--which he couldn't find in the black community, in the white community or in his father's native Kenya--Obama has gained rare skills of reconciliation.

As such a survivor, he makes people believe that only he can make this impossible dream come true.

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The author, a professor at Kyoto University's Institute for Research in Humanities, is a specialist in U.S. ethnic issues.(IHT/Asahi: December 31,2008)