"CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va., Feb. 16 -- At the Black History Month family festival here Saturday, two white deputy sheriffs were confronted with a sensitive racial matter. One of their own had shown up wearing a T-shirt printed with a Confederate flag.

"What do you think we should do?" James Harvey, the senior deputy, asked his colleague.

"Well, he does represent the department, and it doesn't look good," the colleague replied.

"Then either he takes it off," said Harvey, "or we ask him to leave."

In the annals of American racial progress, the decision by the two deputies might strike some as insignificant or, at best, an easy call. But that would discount the complexity of the problem they faced.

In a state where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson were honored on the same day, a white deputy sheriff wearing a Confederate flag to a black history month celebration would probably seem okay to more than a few white citizens.

Nevertheless, times are changing.

Who would have thought, for instance, that voters in Chesterfield -- one of the state's most conservative and reliably Republican counties -- would turn out in droves for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) during last week's presidential primary?

During the Civil War, Chesterfield was a formidable Confederate shield against Union attack on Richmond; now it has given a black man from the Land of Lincoln nearly as many votes as all other candidates from both parties combined.

"It's the most amazing thing, and I don't think we have enough tea leaves to read that could explain it," Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder (D) said. In 1990, Virginia voters made Wilder the nation's first African American governor since Reconstruction. But he did not come close to taking Chesterfield.

This is not to take anything away from Obama's rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). She, too, has many supporters and might yet end up as the Democratic nominee. But Obama's campaign has provided a unique opportunity to examine the state of race relations in America. And few places are better for taking the pulse than the heart of Virginia.

About 2,500 people had gathered inside the Cloverleaf Mall in the Midlothian area for food and music. Husband and wife Bob and Martha Mullen were among the white people enjoying the festivities.

"This is a very conservative county, but that doesn't mean people from different backgrounds don't get along," said Bob Mullen, who runs an equipment leasing business. "A lot of my customers listen to Rush Limbaugh and just don't believe in big government as a solution to social problems."

Martha Mullen, who works as a counseling supervisor for the county schools, added, "But some are just prejudiced and greedy and don't want to see certain people get a share of the pie."

At one of the county's job recruitment tables, a white firefighter greeted a black firefighter with a strong handshake and a "Whassup, my brother?"

An honest answer probably would reveal some racial fault lines that so far have been glossed over by the Obama campaign. Although his youthful white supporters proclaim so hopefully that "race doesn't matter," in reality, it does. A poll by the Pew Research Center taken last year found a huge gap between black and white perceptions of the prevalence of discrimination, with 68 percent of black people saying they frequently face discrimination and 63 percent of white people saying black people do not.

The poll also found that black optimism about the future is now lower than it was in 1986. No doubt an Obama victory would go a long way toward lifting their spirits -- maybe even narrow the racial perception gap.

Deputy Sheriff Harvey and his colleague had done their part. The Confederate flag had disappeared from the Black History Month festival. "The way I see it, that war is over and has nothing to do with me and you," Harvey, who happens to be a Republican, told me. "We're just human beings; we all bleed the same blood."

Small steps, personal and often awkwardly taken -- that's how racial progress tends to get made these days. Of course, when 27,000 people in Chesterfield County go for Obama, you call that a quantum leap." (Courtland Milloy, The Washington Post, February 13, 2008)