Obama’s tremendous victory embedded a single weakness: fairly narrow margin victory, about 52 percent of the vote. That means that almost as many people voted against him as voted for him. As he is enjoying the transition, the best part of a presidency, challenges are taking different shapes to test his ability.
To name a few:
1. Obama’s agenda vs. expanding his political base
2. U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq
3. The Afghan dilemma
4. The Russian Question
5. Global Finance and the European Problem
But, one more challenge is building after Barack Obama’s historic election as America’s first Afro-American President. According to hate-crime monitoring group and analysts, it has led to a surge of racist incidents across the United States.
Recent reports:
1. An interracial couple in Pennsylvania found the remains of a burnt cross in their front garden.
2. In a California town, some have spotted cars and garages being vandalized with swastikas. All of them were covered with racist epithets and slogans such as “Go back to Africa”.
3. Effigy of a black citizen hung from noose in an island community in Maine.
4. “Assassinate Obama” is what students chanting on a school bus in Idaho.
The last week of the US election campaign and its immediate aftermath had witnessed hate-related incidents in hundreds, said Mark Potok, Director of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Centre.
“Kill Him!” shouts were reportedly heard from the section of a crowd during election rallies by Republican vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin. Potok added, what we’re witnessing now is everything from cross burning to ugly racial incidents schoolyards around the country.
It seems the rise in hate crimes would stay fit into part of a longer term trend, said Brian Levin (Professor at Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino). He also contributed by saying, “there is a significant spike in hate crimes from around the election period up until now”.
Levin also said White supremacist internet websites such as StormFront server cashed on the day after the election due to increasing hits in activity.
Potok said, “This soaring rate of racist crimes could be attributable to a “Perfect Storm” of conditions.
US Census Bureau recently estimated, by 2040 whites would lose their majority status with increasing non-white immigration. This would lead to unemployment and eventually create a favourable climate for hate group.
Potok said, “The idea having black man in the White House with a significant number of whites who feel the country built by their forefathers has somehow been stolen and they have lost everything. It seems sheer identity crises on the parts of whites.
Levin said, “Any advancement in race relations would result in concomitant violent backslashes referring to Klu Klux Klan which was formed just after the abolishment of slavery in 1865.
White supremacists refer this as the doomsday scenario wherein Obama is preparing to appoint yet another African-American as an Attorney General, Eric Holder. According to them Obama is nothing less than the Anti-Christ.
Barack Obama has come as a perfect storm that provoked the hardcore racist movement in the United States of America.
Why do people forget that colour cannot divide humans! It is a free world and everyone has equal rights to live under the same blue sky.
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