Is Barack Obama American Enough?

Whether he wants to or not, Obama has come to personify this more globalized, multicultural--yes, cosmopolitan--America. It's one reason many liberals love him: he embodies a new America, more diverse, more tolerant and more open to the world. But as Penn's memo implied, that's also his Achilles' heel. As the face of America has changed, so has the face of American racism. Old-fashioned antiblack bigotry still exists, but today, far more than 20 years ago, white Americans are likely to associate dark skin with foreignness. When Americans complain about school integration now, they're often referring to the children of immigrants, who are forcing their school boards to spend millions of dollars on English-as-a-second-language programs. Were Helms alive today and updating his notorious "white hands" ad, he might blame not African Americans receiving racial preferences but Salvadorans or Somalis working for minimum or below-minimum wage. Since 9/11, these fears have often fused--in not entirely rational ways--with fears of terrorism. Anti-illegal-immigration activists often cite the threat of jihadists creeping across the Rio Grande. Two years ago, when a company from Dubai tried to take over the operation of some U.S. ports, both Democratic and Republican politicians erupted in a demagogic frenzy. For many Americans, globalization is unsettling enough. Wrap it in a kaffiyeh, and you have a political revolt.

It is these 21st century anxieties--anxieties about changes from outside America that seem beyond average Americans' control--that represent the Republicans' best shot at unhorsing Obama now. In March, Pew found that 56% of high school--educated white voters see newcomers as threatening, compared with less than a third of those with a college degree. White voters who haven't graduated from college, according to a Pew poll in September, were more than twice as likely to think Obama is Muslim as those who have. And not coincidentally, it is among these less educated white voters that McCain is strongest. Among non-Hispanic whites who have attended graduate school, according to Gallup this month, Obama leads McCain by 13 points. Among those with a high school diploma or less, he trails by 12.

Fifty years ago, America's racial challenges came largely from within, as black Americans demanded full equality in the country they had inhabited for hundreds of years. Today many of America's racial challenges come from without, as Third World immigration transforms the nation and U.S. workers and leaders struggle to come to terms with China and India, the emerging, nonwhite superpowers. If Martin Luther King Jr. symbolized that earlier transition, Barack Obama may have inadvertently come to symbolize this one. How he fares on Nov. 4 will be a sign of America's willingness to embrace the realities of a new age.

Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations