It’s been a week of symbolic victories as two more bastions of white exclusivity tumbled. Barack Obama‘s successful ascent to be the US’s first black president is a victory above all for the millions of people who have struggled for black civil rights and the millions who have campaigned over the years for equality and in the course of Obama’s campaign raise demands for other political changes – from pulling out of Iraq to tackling America’s economic as well as racial inequality. Of course, in a country which has has more black men in prison than in higher education, and where a quarter of black Americans live below the poverty line, the test of Obama’s real impact on racism lies ahead. The leader of Britain?