Checking racism's postelection pulse

As they woke yesterday morning, settling into the news that voters had elected an African-American to be the next president, schoolchildren and professors, chief executives and bus drivers, black people, white people, and others were asking themselves a simple question.

Is racism in America dead?

The answer, coming as people began to digest the fact that a majority of Americans had chosen a black man, Barack Obama, to be the 44th president, was not nearly as straightforward. No, but sort of. Maybe, but probably not. While Obama's achievement was profound, its psychological lift enormous for many, the impact on the rhythms of people's everyday lives was revealing itself in subtler ways.

In Dudley Square, a teenager said he would no longer be stared at like a "creature" when he walks into downtown office buildings full of white people. A middle-aged mother from Roxbury hoped racial profiling by police would be less likely to occur. In a Dorchester classroom, an Asian-American teacher said he felt emboldened to pursue his dream of becoming a school principal or superintendent.

Amid the hope, there were reverberating notes of caution.

"Racism is not dead in America," said Wayne A. Budd, former US attorney for Massachusetts, who in 1979 became the first black president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. "But I think the president-elect transcended race in many ways. People see him as Obama, the person, the leader, the powerful figure, and don't necessarily focus on his race. That in itself is an enormous accomplishment. But racism? Is it dead? Certainly not."

Race relation scholars agreed it was too soon to write the obituary of American racism. One man climbing to the mountaintop - famously described once by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. - does not mean that the journey is over for everyone else, said Tatishe Nteta, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. On the contrary, Nteta said, black Americans still have a long way to go before they overcome inequalities in critical areas like access to education, healthcare, and jobs that provide personal wealth.

"It's not something that's going to be eliminated overnight," he said, "because we've elected one person."

But electing that one person, Nteta added, definitely does help. Suddenly, following Obama's victory, the mountaintop, once elusive, feels attainable to many. And sociologists say Tuesday night's triumph revealed other truths about America, including one shocking thought: Perhaps we aren't as racist as we believed ourselves to be.

"Are there racist people out there? Absolutely. Is our society racist? No," said Dan Monti, a professor of sociology at Boston University whose specialty is race and ethnic relations in the United States. "I know there are people who will think that's just wrong. But I think Barack Obama winning the presidency of the United States is the single clearest example that we are not. Because if we were, it wouldn't have happened - period."

It's an idea that some political groups are seizing on already to turn a milestone for African-Americans into a defeat of affirmative action.

"One of the arguments that has always had the most visceral appeal was, 'Look, America has a grievous history of racial discrimination and we need to do something to make up for it,' " said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Falls Church, Va. "But I think even people inclined to feel that way believe it has to have some end point. And now that America has elected an African-American to be our leader, this would seem to be a logical time."

On the streets of Boston, a city whose epochal racial tensions were captured in a famous photograph of a white man spearing a black man with the staff of an American flag, people of all races basked in the postelection glow yesterday. Sleep-deprived, they recounted where they were when the returns came in, how they felt when they learned Obama had won, and what they believe his victory signaled.

"I think people are going to look at themselves and say: 'I am somebody,' " said Chuck Johnson, a 53-year-old clerk at Bargains TNT, a clothing shop in Dudley Square. "I think they'll be able to go out and get jobs and say, 'Listen, I am somebody. I need a job.' And they'll have better careers."

James Richardson, a bus driver who was walking on Washington Street, thinks Bostonians might treat one another differently after Obama's election. "Racial prejudice, it will change," Richardson said. "My grandfather's generation went through slavery, my generation civil rights, and now you can see the world is changing."

Others are less convinced.

"Racism is deeply entrenched," said Paul Gorachy, a 48-year-old Verizon employee, who was leaning on the hood of his pickup in Roslindale. "It's not over. It's just being slowly but surely overcome."

Many believe Obama will encounter the same resistance to his agenda as other presidents have and that voters' sky-high hopes for change will eventually come crashing down.

"You think because he's president, automatically black people are going to have plenty of jobs and plenty of money?" said Demetrius Calhoun, a 42-year-old Roxbury resident. "He can't just go and do that."

In his sociology classes yesterday at BU, Monti told his students that everything - and nothing - changed on Tuesday night and that a series of changes, small and large, over the last century had laid the platform for Obama's victory stage.

"With that said, what this represents, both domestically and internationally, is a coming of age of the American people," Monti said.

As such, people, young and old, were still trying yesterday morning to process the moment they had witnessed. Some, like Cleve Killingsworth, the chairman and chief executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, were looking back.

Killingsworth, a 56-year-old African-American and Chicago native, recalled how as a young man he had felt unwelcome on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, not far from Obama's election party Tuesday night.

"There was a clear sense that folks didn't want you to be there," he said. "And when you have that experience, you never lose it."

But yesterday, those wounds were healing for such people as Killingsworth - even if just a little - while younger African-Americans were building their own memories about what it means to be black in America.

Devon Dookhran, an eighth-grader in Dorchester, said his mother slipped into his bedroom late Tuesday night to tell him Obama had won. The 13-year-old listened, he said, and then, feeling good, went back to sleep.

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com. Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.