The reason an Asian-American won’t be elected President for a long, long time is mainly for two reasons:
The “Yellow Peril” mindset;
The fact that a lot of African-Americans dislike Asians. This isn’t like Obama, who had support from a broad swath of minorities.
I’m a Baby Boomer, and the “yellow peril” mindset was characteristic of my father’s generation, who fought the Japanese in WWII. While Communist China was seen as a threat in the days of my youth, I don’t recall them or even the North Vietnamese ever being described as the “yellow peril.” Given the successes of Asian-Americans in business and technology, I think that mindset has pretty much gone by the wayside.
First, not Asian-Americans are “yellow”. In fact, most recent, successful Asian-American political candidates have been Indian-American.
Second, the “yellow peril” mindset is not very common any more
Third, Blacks have no problem for people of any color. Party trumps race in almost all cases.
There is still a sense of other when ity comes to Asians. It is still more acceptable to stereotype Asians in ways it is not acceptable to stereotype others. Asians are seen as more fungible than other minority groups.
Hispanic would by my guess. Muslim or Asian would be my WAG for least likely to be the next first, to speak to the side discussion. Not because those things are necessarily bad things or that supposed US bigotry or whatever would prevent them, but simply because there just aren’t a lot of Asian or Muslim politicians. My guess is there will easily be a Hispanic president at some point in the near future because the percentage of Hispanics in the US is going up and is already pretty high, and there are quite a few Hispanic politicians for potential candidates (there were potential Hispanic candidates who could have been president this time after all)…it’s only a matter of time. I don’t agree with those who think an openly atheistic president is such a wildly impossible thing in the US…again, I think it’s about numbers. There just aren’t that many hard core, open atheists who are in the political pipeline to give us potential presidential candidates and who might in tern make it through to be elected president.