Now that Sen. Barack Obama has won the 2008 presidential election, what really changes for black folks in America?

One thing changes immediately: The race card is no longer in the deck for black folks. It’s gone. We can’t whip it out now and use it as an excuse for failure, or as a way to guilt trip white folks into supporting this cause or that one. It is out of the deck now, gone for good.

We can also kiss that “Willie Lynch letter” nonsense goodbye. And, for that matter, good riddance. The Willie Lynch fiction had no historical basis whatsoever. It was simply balm for the spirits of those black folks who were eager to argue that “white folks” still “controlled” black folks years after slavery ended. In so arguing, those black folks were making a greater case for white supremacy than even the most ardent white supremacists.

That’s going to be harder to do now that we have a black president.

One thing that changed this election -- and that we should continue -- is the number of black folks who headed to the polls to vote. In Baltimore, precincts in black areas that are normally sparse on most election days had lines running out the door and down the block. The wait was anywhere from two to four hours before voters got into a booth to cast their ballots.

Why did it take the presidential candidacy of a man who, only five years ago, most black folks in this country had never even heard of to get this kind of passion about voting among black folks? If we’d been doing this all along, we might have had a black president 20 years ago.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: At least 95 percent of all voting-age black people in America should be registered to vote. Of that 95 percent, another 95 percent should show up at the polls to vote in EVERY election.

That goes for national elections in which a black candidate is running for president down to local elections where black candidates might be running for dogcatcher. Had we been doing this since 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed, we would have effected all those changes Obama says he’s going to bring about.

The late Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey would have been elected president in 1968, not Richard M. Nixon. President Reagan wouldn’t have been in office for one term, much less two, and there’s no way Republicans could have won both houses of Congress in 1994.

But assuming all those things still would have happened, the sheer strength of black voting patterns -- 95 percent registered with 95 percent voting -- would have adjusted the attitude of even the most conservative Republicans. When Nixon, Reagan, President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush were running for the Oval Office, they wouldn’t have come to black folks and asked “What can I do for ya?”  They’d have come asking, “What can I do for ya, BOSS?”

With the voting pattern I’ve suggested, black folks would have had no need of disproportionately registering as Democrats. The majority of us could register as independents and still affect the outcome of any election. Malcolm X -- the man most responsible for the fact that black folks now call themselves “African-Americans” -- suggested precisely that strategy back in 1964. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way for black people to make the Democratic Party accountable to black people is for most of us not to be in it.

Let me make one thing clear about Obama: As a liberal Democrat, his first loyalty .....

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