This was posted this morning by an online friend of mine on Facebook; I thought it was so good--as well as being an interesting spin on the debate that I hadn't seen elsewhere--that I asked his permission to repost it here; he gave his OK to do so in it's entirety:
Last night was a landmark in American race relations. Most of white America accepted black people awhile back. Four years ago they even accepted a soft-spoken intellectual black president. But last night, for the first time, a majority of white America not only accepted an angry and defiant black president, they cheered him on as he tore a distasteful white American to pieces.
It helped that the other guy was a taunting thug and had been asking for it. But during the most heated moment of last night's debate, much of America stopped seeing Obama as a black president and simply saw him as the president. He did what any leader would be expected to in that situation. He aggressively shamed a guy who had tried to sabotage America during an international incident. And the people who thought they were taking a chance by voting for a black guy four years ago didn't say "No, you can't do that, Mr. Black President, that wasn't the deal." Instead they simply said "It's about time he stood up for himself."
There are still caveats. Plenty of white Americans will never vote for a black president under any circumstances, whether they want to admit that to themselves or not. And somewhat predictably, these same types are now going nuts on Twitter about how Obama is now "self loving" and an "egomaniac" according to their most frequently used phrases. In other words, how dare a black guy stand up for himself? But these are the people who never considered voting for him last time either. The very fact that he's succeeded is offensive to them. This mindset isn't going away any time soon. The more progress a consensus achieves, the more extremist the response from the reactionaries. Evolution only captures some people kicking and screaming.
But those who were okay with the idea of a nerdy polite black president decided to stick with him last night when he finally swung the proverbial big stick for the first time in public. And because it was entirely called for, they cheered him on.
We may not see it from him again. After all, that soft-spoken diplomatic persona appears to simply be his default nature. But for the one night in which circumstances demanded that he set aside diplomacy and come out swinging, a majority of white America had the black president's back. And in a nation which has always had race relations at its psychological core, that's a milestone worth noting.