To be fair to Obama, I suspect that although he won't help close the racial divide in any immediate term, the long term trend will be for his presidency to help close it. Whole generations will grow up in a world where a black president is an historical fact, and that'll change how people think about it. It should help to curb white racism, of course (assuming Obama's a decent president), but should also should help curb black racism (if "the Man" is black, it changes a lot of racial thinking on that side of the divide, too).