A DEPRESSING little anecdote from Chris Bodenner:

I stood with mostly African-Americans during the speech and the only time I ever heard booing of Obama, from many directions, was his shout-out to "non-believers."

Goodness. If you consider them a coherent group (and there are arguments for and against doing this, but take it for the sake of argument), non-believers are easily the most underrepresented religious group in American political life. A survey from 2001 (discussed here) found 30m Americans claiming "no religion". About 10% of the population (almost certainly more now), yet there has not only never been an unbelieving president. There is one congressman (Pete Stark of California) out of 535 willing to publicly declare his non-belief in God. So, if you're counting, that's 10% of the population with .2% of the power. Compare Mormons (1.7% of the population, 2.6% of Congress) or Jews (1.7% of the population, 8.4% of Congress), according to this. There are even two Buddhists, two Muslims and a Quaker.

And blacks booed Mr Obama's call for respect of non-believers? It recalls (alas) black support for Proposition 8 in California. A group with such vivid and recent memories of persecution should, in a better world, have more sympathy for (if not always agreement with) other minorities just trying to rub along the best they can in America.