The change election
However you feel about Barack Obama's election to the presidency on Tuesday, it has answered one question that has been in the back of voter's minds, both supporters and opponents, ever since Obama's emergence onto the national scene 21 months ago--can a majority of Americans really be persuaded to pull the lever to elect an African American to the highest office in the land. Our dismal history of race relations has led many--left, right and middle, as well as black, brown and white--to doubt it. Many thought that we might first see a black president only if a black vice-president came to office through the death of a white president. Many more thought even that scenario unlikely.
This has been (famously) an election about change, change in the future direction of the country. But the results, in my opinion, speak to the change that has already occurred, so gradually over the last decades as to pass unremarked, and so subtly as to defy definition. We have not, of course, been beamed into some kind of post-racial utopia since Tuesday. But we can now point to some evidence for the hopes we harbor--that we can put a pernicious national shame behind us--that a more perfect union is a practical possibility, not just a line in the patriotic catechism. That's what I call change.
posted by Dale Hobson @ 11/06/2008
3 comments
3 Comments:
I agree. The racial changes we're experiencing have been evolving for decades. Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfree, Spike Lee, Colin Powell, Tiger Woods and many other mainstream figures have each contributed in their own way. Perhaps we've reached a tipping point with this election, thanks in part to issues so dire that race has been eclipsed by them.
Racism is far from over in America. But it feels as though we may have turned a corner, that the balance has shifted, that racism may no longer be socially acceptable in places where it once was. Imagine, for example, bastions of social racism such as country clubs, turning their policies around so that racism itself is a cause for expulsion. This is not out of the realm of the possible.
After this election, many Americans will have changed their definition of the word "normal." A year or two from now, when we look at pictures of our beautiful first family, many of us will no longer notice the color of their skin. They will simply be America's First Family. This is our future.
I am so proud to be an American citizen. Proud to have a President-elect who is an inspiring role-model for millions of young people who were never able to have their parents or teachers say, "Some day you can become President"...until now. I am proud we have elected a person who will at last be able to tell all of us... black and white, red and blue, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, military and civilian, rural and urban, citizens and aliens - that we will need to tighten our belts and sacrifice. I know that Barak Obama will be speaking to me, to people different from me, and different from himself. I pray that we will listen, tighten our belts, and still maintain our hope.
Dale,
This is your best post ever. I think you nailed the analysis.
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