Outside, after the service at a different Harlem church, the First Corinthian Baptist Church, I ask two well-dressed men in their late twenties for their thoughts on the election. One of them beams as he tells me that he's voting for Obama in Pennsylvania, but when I ask the other if I'm wrong to assume that he's supporting Obama too, he replies, "You might be", and has nothing more to say. It's possible that he is a member, or a would-be member, of the Harlem Republican Club, which has seen its already tiny membership dwindle to the point of redundancy during Obama's ascent. Much more likely, though, is that he is supporting Obama, but resents the fact that I have reached this conclusion, as he thinks, purely on the evidence of his skin colour. Ira, "the Black Jew", had freely admitted that Obama's race was central to his appeal, and his world of black cousins and English homeboys was one that, though not "post-racial" yet, could conceivably evolve in that direction. But for now, I was back in the real world of political correctness, tension and misunderstanding that is far less promising.

New Yorkers are easily offended and, in another part of town, the mere suggestion of voting Republican might offend a white person. In the East Village the next day, a middle-aged woman is talking loudly on her mobile phone: "You're not voting for McCain anymore are you? Good, you've redeemed yourself and I'll love you even more now. But seriously, what about that Sarah Palin? The way she just shoots animals for no reason - I mean she is just nuts."

In any case, I meet a non-white Republican later that night. Melvin, the Dominican-born bouncer at an East Village nightclub, is a Republican on social issues. He voted for Bush in 2004 because he "was scared of Kerry". But he isn't a neocon: "I'm surprised you knew that word - it sounds like the name of an evil robot." This time he is voting for the Constitution Party candidate, Chuck Baldwin.

In Harlem on election night, a woman selling Obama pins with her daughter stops me in the crowded street. "I don't see you wearing one of these, baby." I buy one and am happy to sport it as I head back downtown to a club where the hip-hop generation is throwing itself a party. Outside in the smoking-pen, after CNN has projected an Obama victory, people are doing the kind of dances that the shy hero of a romantic comedy does after his love interest has agreed to a first date and gone upstairs, and hugging strangers, saying things like, "I never thought I would live through history." After Obama's acceptance speech, and the dazzling, moving sight of a black first family alone on stage, I walk out to buy cigarettes. On the first corner, five NYPD squad cars and one unmarked car are engaged in what seems to be the task of arresting one passive black male. A crowd has gathered, and one man, craning over the handlebars of his bicycle to film the incident on his mobile phone, informs everyone that one of the cops had said, "Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet." His video will fall well short of the Rodney King-type footage he seems to be hoping for, but the scene is a brutal reminder of the continuity of the status quo.