Perhaps We Shall Overcome After All

I'm still stunned. 

A friend of mine asked me to describe how I felt about Tuesday's events, since I am the only friend he has of immediate African descent.  I don't really know how to describe how it felt to watch Barack Obama win Tuesday's presidential election.  Not in words, anyway.  Of course that won't stop me from trying. 

It's hard to explain to non-blacks how many African-Americans feel about the United States.  It's easiest to fall back on Chris Rock's words: "To black people, America is like that uncle that put you through college...but molested you." 

For me the negative feelings don't run as deep, because my family didn't get here until the 70s.  But it's that sentiment that explains why Michelle Obama said she was proud of this country for the first time in her adult life.  Eugene Robinson explains it better than I could ever hope to.  It's hard to be unquestioningly proud of a place that provides so much, yet often treats you poorly based on things you have no control over.  But it becomes easier when things like this happen, because you get a clear sense that progress is being made. 

Before this, the Pledge of Allegiance were words to be admired, but not quite to be taken literally: more like "with liberty and justice for some."  The Star-Spangled Banner?  More like the "land of the thief, and the home of the slave", as KRS-ONE put it.  After all, how free were we when many (if not most) white people, the majority and the founders of the country built on the backs of people of all races, would never choose black people for the most important job in the country mostly due to the color of his skin? 

Only 40-odd years ago, black people couldn't use the same toilets as white people, much less expect to be elected president.  20-odd years ago, the USA had a good relationship with a country that enforced a strict, oppressive, color-coded political, social and legal system within its borders. 

Tuesday, this country proved that it may in fact move on from all that.  Granted, a part of me feels like this card.   But a lot of me is much more optimistic than I was before Tuesday. 

I must admit, it got a little bit dusty in the OP household when Jesse Jackson cried on TV in Grant Park.  No matter what you think about Jesse now, he used to be one of the top 3 civil rights leaders in this country.  He has been sprayed, shot at, beaten, hosed and jailed while fighting for equal rights alongside Dr. Martin Luther King.  He was in the hotel room where Dr. King got shot in the throat and assassinated. 

He has since become a cynical purveyor of racial politics, and he had gone on record as being an adversary of Barack Obama - a candidate who threatened Jackson's political reality and the structure he had become entirely too accustomed to.  Yet even he was moved to tears.

I don't want to blow the events out of November 4th out of proportion.  The election of Obama does not automatically solve issues of racial inequality in this country.  It doesn't suddenly end the need for some form of affirmative action.  And even in spite of the horrible mismanagement of the USA over the past 8 years, it took a near-flawless campaign from the most charismatic presidential candidate (one who, by the way, is half-black and was raised by white grandparents) who had very few skeletons in his closet to get a black man in the White House. 

Moreover, despite the lowest approval ratings in history for a Republican administration, an unpopular war and an economic malaise, Obama was STILL tied or behind McCain in the polls until the U.S. economy nearly collapsed a month before the election took place.  It also took a rather inept McCain campaign and the status-quo Republicans dismissing any semblance of their supposed small-government principles.  So let's not suddenly assume all of America's race issues and cultural boogeymen have suddenly been exorcised. 

Even though I am extremely worried about potential assassination attempts, I am more optimistic about this country than I have been for a long time.  I think it will take more than one term for many of America's problems to be substantively addressed.  Frankly, I'm not even sure Obama will succeed -- or that anyone could succeed given the horrible state of affairs today.  Nevertheless, I'm thrilled that my fellow Americans could go to the polls, swallow their biases and say "You can say whatever you want about the black dude, but I know I'm not voting for the party that's been shoveling us the same increasingly-rancid crap for the past decade." 

Up until about 5 days before the election, I thought Obama would lose.  Most blacks never thought this day would comein our lifetimes, including me.  And even though it took a perfect storm, I've never been happier to be wrong. 

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