Like him or not, the emotions are real. I’m hoping he and others are thinking of the election of Obama as a new beginning, not an end.
I know one is not supposed to talk about race in polite company, but in this case the occasion demands it. My darling wife (DW) and I, like millions of others, have been mesmerized by the run up of political events overwhelming the airways and media in general, and race has inevitably became a part of the conversation.
To be perfectly honest, I did not decide to support Obama until the day before the primary. I had been distracted by Hillary and others (good people all) presenting their own case for experience, etc., etc., etc. I was watching one of the cable channels (certainly not FOX) interview a young arabic college student in one of the middle eastern countries. He said in part, “can you imagine the impact of waking up one day and learning that a black man named Barak Hussein Obama had been elected President of the most powerful country in the world?” I realized at that moment that I could, indeed, imagine it and that it would not only be good for our country, it might, just might galvanize our friends and our enemies around the world to see us once again as a bastion of hope and equality. Perhaps in isolation, a bit flimsy, but taken with all of my other thoughts about the candidates that I had to choose from, it was enough to tip the balance. I became an Obama supporter. I took him not in spite of or because of his race, but because of what I thought he could do for our country. But he is….certainly black.
And then it happened. The American people did it. They elected Obama. Some were disappointed, a few were in despair, but many, many more rejoiced. Some danced and sang, his ancestral tribe in Kenya killed and roasted a goat to feed the party, some gave speeches, and yes, some cried. As I heard the words of Obama drifting out over the airways and the crowd of thousands in Grant Park, I followed the uplifting poetry of his speech with one part of my brain, but the other part drifted back to thoughts and events that provided a different sort of personal context for what had happened.
I remembered as a ten year old seeing a “white’s only” water fountain in the Sears store in San Angelo and wondering what would happen if a black person drank from it.
I remembered waiting for a Continental Trailways bus in Waco with a sign on the door which said, “No Blacks Allowed”. And there were none.
I remember my baseball team being turned away from a motel in Pasadena because Roy F., our best player and only black, was a part of our team.
I remember my dear mother telling me about a new black classmate that I had met at school in the third grade to, “be nice to him but don’t play with him”, and wondering why.
And more recently I remember acquaintances reacting with surprise when I indicated support for Obama by saying, “how could you ever vote for a black man?” I replied, “how could I not”.
I vividly remember the stream of “hate” emails intensifying throughout the campaign trying to convince me and untold others that Obama was a Muslim, or a closet terrorist, or was not a citizen or a patriot, or…….you know the kind of stuff.
On a far less personal, but yet meaningful, level I remember the story of Teddy Roosevelt inviting Booker T. Washington for dinner in the White House. The first black man to be in the dinning room rather than the kitchen, and how Teddy was pilloried by the social and political pontiffs of his time for having done so.
I remember LBJ and our own Mr. Sam and others fighting for and getting Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to extend the vote to the black community that had been guaranteed in theory by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution in the face of vitriolic opposition from some of the country’s leading politicians.
And then I saw the tears of joy in Rev. Jackson’s eyes.
I am mindful of the fact that in even our own family we can count ancestors who were slave owners, and perhaps grandparents or even parents who evidenced a far more subtle racist behavior as well as those of our own generation who have tried, more or less successfully to live as if all people really are created equal. And now our sons and daughters and their children are wondering what all the fuss was about, and rejecting the anger and guilt that many of us have felt.
I’m not so naive as to believe that because America elected Obama racism will no longer rear its ugly head. Even in this historic race, according to Gallup, 20% of the people admitted that race was a factor in determining their vote. Nor should it be lost on us that while Obama won the national vote with 52%, he got only 41% of the white male vote. While I can’t know for sure, I surely suspect that some of that gap is composed of those “I’ll never vote for a black man types”. There is no doubt that with Obama’s election things have irrevocably changed for the better. We will think better of ourselves, our friends and allies around the world will think better of us, and even our enemies will have to grant us a modicum of grudging respect. We have shown that we can live as we have for so long spoken. An old aphorism suggests that, “a mind once expanded will never return to it’s original shape”. I believe it.
Nicholas Kristoff in his column of November 6th cited Dr. King’s speech to the State of Hawaii’s legislature in 1959. He closed that speech by using the words of an aged black preacher who himself had been a slave and who had ended his sermon with this prayer in the vernacular of his time. “Dear Lord”, he said. We ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we gonna be; we ain’t what we ought to be; but, thank God, we ain’t what we was”.
We, too, now are no longer what we were.
