Originally posted by Theairoh
You and I seem to have a very different definition of Racism. While I believe there are still issues of race and ethnicity in America, I think that they are mostly isolated cases of prejudice, rather than racism since equal rights have been realized by every ethnicity in America.

To analyze the difference, let me give you a personal example of mine: As a white, I have had other ethnic groups make the assumpation that I viewed them differently based on their race, and thusly was treated differently. I would view this as an aspect of racial stereo typing or prejudice, but not racism because racism has never been considered to be an issue for whites in America.



Now I'm really confused. What do you mean here exactly?



Actually, what I said was completely accurate, and the sources you cited failed to indicate the margin that President-Elect Obama won versus Senator Mccain as opposed to the margins of previous years, so let me help you out there:

1992 results

1996 results

2000 results

2004 results

2008 results

If we go back all the way to 1992 we see that former president Clinton won the popular vote versus George Bush Sr. by a margin 5805256 total votes. In the following election, Clinton won again versus Bob Dole by a margin of 8203602. In the next, Al Gore won with a margin of 543895 over Geore Bush Jr. While in the next election, Bush Jr. won against Kerry with only 3012166 votes over. Finally, in 2008, in Obama versus Mccain, we total out with 9522083 popular votes as the margin between the two competitors.

You'll also notice that in each of those statistics, following 1996, each of the TOTAL amount of voters altogether voting in the presidential election is higher.

Put simply. More people voted in the 2008 election than any of the elections in the past 16 years and only in the years 1992 and 1996 (when Henry Perot had participated) were there greater percentile margins of victory for the winning candidate. And I only went back to the election of 1992 to find this out!

America chose Obama to lead the country by a very large margin. Greater than has been seen in the last decade. The presidential election is, if anything is, the strongest indication of whether or not America is willing to trust in a coloured citizen.

Does that mean prejudice is over, gone, and done with? No, I wouldn't argue that. But racism has been totally defeated in this country.
I think you missed the edu link that displayed the voter turnout for 2004, versus 2008.. When you look at the margins in percentage increase it really isn't that huge of gap.


Anyhow, this voter turnout could be another thread topic....