This election DOES represent a change in the mindset of Americans, as there was a huge mutual distrust between blacks and whites.  This election DOES represent a shift in the mindsets of both sides, because it has shown that most of America is okay with having a mulatto person in the highest office of the land.  This might not have been true before because there were not any qualified minority candidates that had run before, but that's also because of socio-economic factors in minority education, so if you want to get into that can of worms...

This change has been a very long process, and this election DOES represent a shift in the perception of how Americans percieve minorities, and how the world sees Americans' attitudes toward minorities.

If you look at the cosby show, they don't deal with race at all, and that's my whole point. It was an attempt to make a "normal" sitcom, and in the process they "normalized" middle class black families to America.  Before the Cosby Show, almost all other black families on tv before were either broke and pissed off at white people, or happy servants.  This inadvaertently "normalized" the poor, suffering, militant black family, which may have been common, but it became an umbrella generalization of all black families.  I'm saying the Cosby show was the start of the normalization of that image because it really represents the first time that a middle class black family was on millions of screens for 8 years straight.

Chris