The 47-year-old politician rose to the highest post because of his stand against the war i

n Iraq and his plans to fix a weak economy. But what will the first 47-year-old African- American president do for race relations？

Obama's victory appears to have given blacks and other minorities a true national role model. For years, many looked to athletes and musicians for inspiration. As Darius Turner, an African-American high school student in Los Angeles, told The Los Angeles Times, "Kobe doesn't have to be everybody's role model any more."

Recent polls also suggest that Obama's victory has given Americans new optimism about race relations. For example, a USA Today poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe relations between blacks and whites "will finally be worked out". This is the most hopeful response since the question was first asked during the civil rights revolution in 1963.

However, it's still too early to tell whether Obama's presidency will begin to solve many of the social problems facing low-income black communities.

Although blacks make up only 13 percent of the US population, 55 percent of all prisoners are African-American. Such numbers can be blamed on any number of factors on America's racist past, a failure of government policy and the collapse of the family unit in black communities.

It is unlikely that Obama will be able to reverse such trends overnight. However, Bill Bank, an expert of African-American Studies, says that eventually young blacks need to find role models in their own communities. "That's not Martin Luther King, and not Barack Obama," he told The Los Angeles Times. "It's actually the people closest to them. Barrack only has so much influence."

In the opinion of black British politician Trevor Phillips, Obama's rise will contribute more to multiculturalism than to race relations in the US.

"When the G8 meets, the four most important people in the room will be the president of China, the prime minister of India, the prime minister of Japan and Barrack Obama," he told London's The Times newspaper. "It will be the first time we've seen that on our television screens. That will be a huge psychological shift(心理转变) for both the white people and the colored ones in the world."

For years, before Obama was elected president of the US,______.

A．Kobe was the only role model for all the blacks

B．blacks could only find role models on the basketball court

C．minorities in America couldn't find role models in their real life

D．American blacks had no role model who was successful in the political field