NAACP: Obama Win Won't Fix Race Problems

Racial disparity will remain an issue in America, regardless of whether Barack Obama is elected as the nation's first black president, the chairman of the NAACP told the organization's national convention Sunday night.

Julian Bond, a veteran civil rights leader, said Obama's candidacy doesn't "herald a post-civil rights America, any more than his victory in November will mean that race as an issue has been vanquished in America."

But he drew loud applause when he said the country, and "all of us here," are taking pride in the success in this year's campaign by a candidate who couldn't have stayed in some cities' hotels a few decades ago.

"We know that Obama's electoral success - even if he should win the ultimate prize - won't signal an end to racial discrimination, but it does mark the high point of an interracial movement that dates back to the Underground Railroad," Bond said, referring to Cincinnati's historical role in helping fleeing slaves reach freedom.

Obama plans to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's convention Monday night, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain will speak here Wednesday.

Bond said blacks are being hit hard by the nation's mortgage loan crisis, and he was sharply critical of the Bush administration, saying it has undermined constitutional rights, failed to oppose racial discrimination, supported voter identification laws that suppress black voters and thrived on "politics of divide and conquer."

A Justice Department spokesman said in response that it has vigorously enforced voting laws.

"One of the highest priorities of the Department of Justice and its Civil Rights Division is to protect voting rights and enforce specific federal laws that help to ensure that all qualified voters have an opportunity to cast their ballots and have them counted," spokesman Dean Boyd said.

Bond noted that a 2004 speech in which he criticized President Bush led to an IRS review of NAACP's tax-exempt status.

"The NAACP will continue to speak truth to power until this administration leaves town," he said Sunday night.

He detailed racial failures by past presidents of both parties, then took a verbal swing at former President Bill Clinton, who made critical comments about Obama while campaigning for his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton during Democratic primaries.

"We fared much better under the man who liked to be called 'the first black president,' but then we watched him try to bring down the man who would be the real first black president," Bond said.

Obama recently called Clinton, and the former president has offered to campaign for him.