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PAUL WAUGH
2/28/08 Evening Standard (London, UK) 27
THE election of Barack Obama as US president would prolong
rather than end America's racial divide, Britain's race
equalities chief Trevor Phillips claims.
THE election of Barack Obama as US president would prolong
rather than end America's racial divide, Britain's race
equalities chief Trevor Phillips claims.
The chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission accused
Mr Obama of "ruthless cynicism" and said he would not be "the
harbinger of a post- racial America" if he wins the White
House this year.
Mr Phillips said he also felt "indignant" that the 46-yearold
senator was "a man whose African ancestors never endured
transatlantic slavery".
Mr Obama's father was Kenyan and his mother a white American.
Britain's equalities supremo said he would be "surprised" if Mr
Obama won the Democratic party nomination even though Hillary
Clinton appears to be the underdog at present.
But even if he did win, his victory would not herald the arrival
of a new race-free politics in America, Mr Phillips says in an
article in Prospect magazine today.
Mr Phillips conceded that blacks in segregated areas were voting
strongly for Mr Obama. Yet he claimed that there was "anecdotal
evidence" that blacks who compete for jobs and housing with whites
do not "buy into Obamania".
Equally, whites who lived cheek by jowl with blacks in states
such as New York and California had yet to be convinced, he
suggested.
"In truth, Obama may be helping to postpone the arrival of
a post-racial America and I think he knows it," Mr Phillips
wrote..
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