Yes, America may be ready to elect a black president. Yet I pessimistically believe that any black person who does make it to the Oval Office sooner or later will end up like John F. Kennedy. Dad told me long ago that Colin Powell gave up the idea of running for the presidency because of death threats. Don't know if my late father had his facts right. But recently on television, I heard that Barack Obama was "under special guard."
President Bush has said, regards preventing terrorist incidents, that "we need to be right every time, but the terrorists need to get it right just once." The same would apply in a black presidency. The Secret Service would need to avert assasins each and every time. But all it would take some racist version of Lee Harvey Oswald would be one single bullet finding its mark.