KIDS THESE DAYS:

So many others have picked the election of Barack Obama to the presidency apart, but there is one discussion I have not seen. It’s a bit complex, but bear with me as I try to get this point across.

Not long ago, a father of a particular Newport Beach high school student was beside himself.

He had picked up his daughter’s phone to make a call and found a text message that contained a racial slur sent to her. And a bad one at that.

“If I had used that word growing up, or if I had shown any indication that I had even thought about discriminating in that way, I would have been thrown out of the house. The punishment for racist talk or behavior was worse than that for assault,” the parent said.

He confronted his daughter, who just laughed. She told him that using the word meant nothing; that, like him, she would never think of treating someone unfairly because of the color of their skin, their religion or any other criteria.

The word she used was just a word, she argued.

This story supports something I’ve believed for a while now: Today’s teenagers and twentysomethings are the first generation to be changed by the civil rights movement from birth.

These young people just don’t look at race the way their parents did. As a result, what yesterday would have been horrible is today nothing more than harmless slang.

In the ’60s and ’70s we were trying hard to be colorblind because any indication that we had noticed the color of one’s skin was bad — it meant that we had race on our minds.

Imagine, for example, not including skin color in the description of a perpetrator in a robbery that you just witnessed.

Now imagine that same eyewitness today as a 20-year-old. Of course he is going to mention that the suspect was black or white or green or blue. He’ll give up that information without a second thought because it’s an important detail, not because he is a racist.

I thought of all of this as I read Shelby Steele’s post-election column in the Los Angeles Times last Wednesday.

Steele wrote that Obama’s campaign approach was “post-racial,” and that, “This worked politically for Obama because it tapped into a deep longing in American life — the longing on the part of whites to escape the stigma of racism.”

That’s one part that disturbed me, this psychoanalysis by someone unqualified to do so and because he has a vested interest in keeping this dialogue alive.

Obama’s win was put over the top by the young voters I have mentioned. If there really is or was any white guilt — which I do not believe motivated anyone to vote for Obama — these young adults don’t have it.

They don’t see skin color the way their parents did. And perhaps that’s the real point here: They do see skin color, and it just doesn’t matter.

If there is anyone in the country who would fit Steele’s description of the white man trying to escape the stigma of racism, it should be me: I’m 53 and grew up in the era of civil rights protests. My home was just like the father’s described above.

But I did not vote for Obama.

I have no hope that discussions of race are over. As with other elements of our society, there are too many sorry people making a living off of it for it to end.

But I am encouraged by today’s young adults and by their votes.

In the end, the election of Obama was a surprise only to the media.

The rest of us, those who voted for him and those who did not, understand that we did what we always do in the voting booth: We voted for the person we thought was better qualified to lead the nation.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to [email protected].