An e-mail sent by a Republican aide, entitled Historical Keepsake Photo, features portraits of the first 43 American presidents in a variety of dignified and statesmanlike poses. The succession of white faces, however, comes to an abrupt halt in the final and 44th panel which displays just a pair of cartoon eyeballs set against an entirely dark background.

Little more than six months since the US elected its first black president and Barack Obama declared “change has come to America”, hopes that the country is finally overcoming a racist past are being tempered by evidence that parts of it — sections of the Republican Party in particular — remain aghast at the notion of a black First Family.

While most of the country shifted towards Democrats in November, a striking swath, stretching from rural western Pennsylvania, extending southwest through Appalachia and encompassing most of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, swung against Mr Obama. Sherri Goforth, who works as a legislative assistant for the Republican leadership in the Tennessee state senate, was given a written reprimand this week but allowed to keep her job after being identified as having sent out the e-mail with the presidential portraits.

Asked if she understood that the depiction of Mr Obama was offensive, Ms Goforth was quoted as saying she regretted sending it to the wrong e-mail list. “I inadvertently hit the wrong button,” she said. “I’m very sick about it and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”

Nor was this the only such instance in recent weeks. The internet is providing glimpses of an unreconstructed underbelly of America, which, in turn, is being seized upon and presented in vivid detail by liberal websites such as Wonkette or the Daily Kos.

Earlier this month Diann Jones, a vice-chairman of the Collin County Republican Party in Texas, apologised for an e-mail that denounced plans for a tax on guns as “another terrific idea from the black house and its minions”. In February, Dean Grose, the mayor of Los Alamitos in California, sent an e-mail to a black businesswoman, depicting the White House lawn planted with watermelons. Mr Grose said he had not meant to cause offence and that he was unaware of the stereotype that the African-American diet consisted of watermelon or fried chicken.

Carol Carter, a member of Florida’s state Republican committee, mused in an e-mail to colleagues in January on black people’s ability to travel to Mr Obama’s inauguration when so many had drowned in Hurricane Katrina. “I’m confused,” she said. “How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in one day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?” She was forced to resign but not before begging readers of the e-mail to show they had a “sense of humour”. The local Republican executive declared that Ms Carter “doesn’t have a racist bone in her body”.

The Republican Party earlier this year elected Michael Steele as its first black National Committee chairman . He has acknowledged, however, that the party’s difficulties with ethnic minority votes will not be solved easily because too many officials “don’t give a damn”. To them, he said, “outreach means let’s throw a cocktail party, find some black folks and Hispanics and women, wrap our arms around them — ‘See, look at us’. And then we go back to the same old, same old.”

One of his opponents during the contest was Chip Saltsman, the former Tennessee Republican chairman who sent friends a Christmas gift of songs by the satirist Paul Shanklin, including the track: “Barack the Magic Negro”.

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