It's good ( and at the very least "anti-fascist") that these white voters feel good about voting for a Black person, even if he's doing a Martin Luther King "i have a dream" message.
...........
Sure, it's nice that in 21st century America, more white folks than ever before think black people are human beings and, it follows, worthy of the Presidency.
But wait! Do you hear that sound? It's the postmodern complexity klaxon. Listen carefully to its warning.
It's possible to have a simultaneously post-racist yet still imperialist/neolib future. The death (or at least diminishment) of white supremacism as a political factor may simply lead to a multi-ethnic supremacism based upon the ever popular notion of America the Exceptional.
Looking at Rice and Powell, some have concluded they're anomalies - "racist blacks" whose arch conservatism (in the case of Rice) is evidence of their divergence from black normality.
I've taken away a different lesson: black people, when given the chance, divide themselves into the same sorts of political/philosophical camps as the majority. Is there a fundamental black progressivism? If so, it only persists in the face of white supremacism. Liberated from that constraint (which creates partial distance from some of the national manias and myths) black Americans are as likely as their white cousins to launch cruise missiles.
To put it another way, in the long run, Rice isn't at all an aberration but a glimpse of the post-feminist post-civil rights yet still imperialist future.
Clarence Thomas, who you mentioned in your post, is merely a paleo-jackass by comparison.
.d.