John McCain camp accuses Barack Obama of playing of the race card

The simmering issue of race boiled over on the presidential campaign trail Thursday after John McCain's camp accused Barack Obama - the first African American with a real shot at the presidency - of playing the race card.

The high-voltage charge came after Obama said McCain and Republicans want to scare voters by saying he doesn't look like the Presidents on dollar bills.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

McCain agreed. "I'm sorry to say that it is [true]," McCain told CNN. "There's no place in this campaign for that."

Team McCain got riled over a riff Obama repeatedly tossed into his speeches Wednesday, saying that his opponents would try to paint him as too risky a bet for commander in chief.

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face," Obama said in Missouri. "So what they're going to try to do is make you scared - of me.

"You know, 'He's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, 'he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on the dollar bills.'"

Although race has been an undercurrent in the White House contest, McCain hasn't raised Obama's heritage. He's condemned people who inject race into the daily debate, such as some anti-Obama ads run by the North Carolina GOP.

Aides said the Republican's feelings are deeply rooted in personal experience. In 2000, McCain was the victim of a whisper campaign in South Carolina - allegedly fostered by allies of then-rival George W. Bush - that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a black woman. The child is McCain's adopted daughter, who is Bangladeshi.

"There is no greater directive inside this campaign," a top McCain aide said of rules against anything approaching racism. "It is like the quickest ticket out of this building."

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denied Obama referred to race in his remarks about GOP fearmongering.

"He was referring to the fact that he didn't come into the race with the history of others," Gibbs said. "It is not about race."

Even if McCain felt aggrieved by the Democrat's dollar-bills dig, an old Hillary Clinton hand warned he could be playing with fire just for crying "race card." 

"Our experience is that Obama is very hard to attack on this," said a former Clinton adviser. "You start to go after him on race and they will eat you alive."

Obama surrogate John Kerry tried to do just that. He went on TV to blast McCain for "inserting" race into the campaign through the back door. continues here

Poll reveals America is still divided over race relations as country gears up for election

Sixty per cent of black Americans think race relations are still bad in the United States more than 40 years after their struggle for equal rights gained worldwide prominence, it emerged yesterday.

The results of a poll showing America is still sharply divided by the issue came as it gears up for an election that could put the first black president into the White House.

While the majority of blacks and whites believe the country is ready for a black leader, the consensus ends there.

Each group holds vastly different views on Democratic Senator Barack Obama and the state of America's race relations. 

The survey for the New York Times and television station CBS News revealed that 83 per cent of blacks had a favourable opinion of Obama, compared to just 31 per cent of white people. 

Asked if race relations were generally bad, almost 60 per cent of blacks said yes, compared to 34 per cent of whites. 

Those figures have not changed since a similar survey eight years ago revealed that few Americans experienced integrated workplaces and neighbourhoods or had regular contact with people from other races. 

Obama, 46, the son of a black Kenyan man and white mother, has fired up an enthusiasm for politics not seen since the Sixties. 

Dubbed the black John Kennedy, he faces Arizona Republican Senator John McCain in the election on November 4. 

Two-thirds of all those polled said they believe America is ready for a black president and overall 31 per cent said they thought race relations would improve if Obama was elected. 

But almost 40 per cent of blacks said there had been little progress in getting rid of racial discrimination in recent years, while just 17 per cent of whites agreed. 

Meanwhile, just over 25 per cent of whites said too much had been made about problems facing black people, while 50 per cent of blacks said not enough had been done to bring down racial barriers. continues here