Barack Obama has an unusual background in family and education and in living in different countries in his formative years as a boy and youth and also studying at two of the most prestigious universities in America.

His colourful family history and background that involves experiences with different types of people on three continents must surely have created a new species that benefits from such a mixture of genes if this, too, can be taken into account.

It is probably too late and too smart for him to be too American and to think himself as the president of just a country, especially for him having seen more of the world than any other US president.

And not having a country home or a ranch somewhere in Texas might be good for Obama for it exposes him to the elements and he is able to know how everybody else feels and that is good for his senses especially at times like these.

So it will also be good that when he make his first trips outside of America as president, he visits Jakarta where he had lived for a few years as a boy and so he can be reconnect with his past and his childhood. This is his ‘ranch’.

It is not just American voters who were counting on him to lead their nation but others around the world too who would prefer him to change the course of world history. Maybe this was also a factor that had driven the voters in America to vote for him, when they realized how the rest of the world too, thought highly of him as their future president.

Now we do know why the foreign trip that Obama made to Europe created such a high impact and expectations. It showed to the rest of the world and to all Americans how he cared for their views and feelings and that he wouldn’t be a president with a cowboy instinct, shooting from the hip.

But is the rest of the world hoping for too much from the new president of America? Unfortunately, and regardless of what many say, America is still a divided nation, where things are still seen in black and white.

There are traces or semblances of civility and desegregation but beyond the surface and glitz, Obama is still referred to generally as an African-American even by his fellow Americans and their media.

They use the term to distinguish him and his race from the others who are known simply as whites or just Americans. The blacks may not have to write their racial background on any form or in their passports but they still carry the stigma of their ancestors who had come from Africa.

Obama is unlike the other Europeans and Caucasians who have for a long time been grouped as the whites, regardless of their racial backgrounds and origins. Most of their ancestors did not speak a word of English when they came to the US.

The only traces of their racial backgrounds can only be found in their varied names.

It will be a long, long while before the issues of the colour and race are completely erased in the US. And the election of Obama may not be a good precursor of things to come. He may be used as a scapegoat for the whites to frown on the blacks even more, especially if he proves himself b incapable of leading their nation and became another blunder like the Bushes.

Obama may have what it takes to take America out of the bushes, but he may not survive onslaughts from the same American media that has hailed him if he in the next few months proves to Americans and the rest of the world that he is not what they had thought him to be.

It is still America in black and white, regardless of whether they have turned in their first so- called black president in the person of Barack Hussein Obama.

The fact that they still refer to him and the others as African-Americans must surely mean that colour still dominates the thinking of the Americans. Whereas, the Caucasians are just regarded as whites regardless of whether they are people of different races from Europe or the West including the Jews.

By right, John McCain should be referred to as a Scottish-American, but this does not happen for some strange reason. Most probably it’s because of his colour, which is white.

Obama’s win, therefore, does not mean that he has erased the colour bar in America. It is a country which still sees in black and white...