Senator John McCain's concession speech earlier this month was surely one of the most gracious of all time. It recalled an era when hate was the norm.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters.
He went on to declare that Obama's election demonstrates 'America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time'.
Despite the reality of an African American president-elect, McCain is undoubtedly overstating the distance we've travelled. Election day in the US also brought popular acceptance of California's Proposition 8, which effectively quashed a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that had legalised gay marriage in the state.
Arguably that result reflects continuing hostility towards homosexuals by a significant proportion of the population. It is also a reminder of acts of anti-gay violence that have occurred in the recent past.
One such incidence is the celebrated 1998 murder of Wyoming 21-year-old Matthew Shepherd, which is depicted in The Laramie Project, which is being performed in Sydney this month.
The current production grew out of two previous university productions. The first, in 2004, received threats from Westboro Baptist Church in the US, which had picketed Matthew Shepard's funeral with 'God Hates Fags' placards.
Director Chris Hay explains in the program notes: 'We perform this show in 2008, the ten year anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death, in the hope that a significant change in attitude has occurred in the last several years.'
In fact attitudes can and do change. One that is perhaps as remarkable as the election of an African American president is the fall from grace of heavily remunerated CEOs, and wealthy players in the banking and finance sectors in the US. After the collapse of the economy of the western world, they are no longer envied and looked up to. Instead they are despised, and even hated, for the hardship their actions have brought to the lives of many people.
Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the National Press Club last month:
As we contemplate the impact of this financial crisis on real economies, real people and real lives, it must also galvanise us to act in the future that we never allow greed and lax regulation to put us in this position again.
It is certainly not a good thing if we have found another class of people to hate. And