Obama Really Does Matter

OK…so I’ve heard what I’m about to say so many times now that it’s almost unthinkable to imagine myself adding to the chorus. But like every other pundit writing sound bites to the amorphous public, I have my own unique perspective and I can’t seem to rest until I put it out there.

Obama. This is big. Really. For the countless interactions we haphazardly define as “race relations” in this country, I have to say that this is probably as BIG as the Civil Rights Movement. Here’s what I see.

I heard from someone that upon realizing that Obama won the election Whoopi Goldberg said something to the effect of, “I feel as though I can finally unpack my bags.” All but a few black people know exactly what she meant. Other people of random backgrounds have no idea what she was referring to. And some people no doubt get her point exactly and feel flabergasted at yet another person of African descent proclaiming that he or she has never felt like a full citizen. Let me make it real.

I know lots of people who never got that essential unconditional love as a child. Surely you know some of them also, right? No matter what they do, regardless of the successes they accumulate along the way, they always want some kind of intangible recognition that will presumably satisfy the deep seated yearning for acceptance and inform them that they are good enough. I must confess, I have a low tolerance for these people. Maybe it’s because I seemed to manage quite fine in the quest for self love without having received a tremdous amount as a child; perhaps it’s simply because I have a disposition that neither craves nor benefits from the love and recognition I receive from others around me.

In any case, when I encounter people like this I am often left wondering what it could possibly take for them to finally look in a mirror and say the imortal words of Stuart Smally, the Saturday Night Live character: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” For some people, of course, the answer is “nothing”; tt is never going to happen. For others, however, it can be one simple random achievement or a long-awaited rocognition from someone in their lives.

So let’s flip the script and look at African Americans (as opposed to West Indians and more recent immigrants from Africa). Here is a population of people who were never accepted. In fact, they were called and treated as “beasts” and “sub humans” and every attempt to integrate them into the American fold and treat them as people with the inalienable rights as spelled out in the Constitution was met with violent and (usually) bloody resistance. This is true right up into the second half of the 20th century. Sure, each decade seemed to offer its own unique opening, but watching the police turn the dogs loose on peaceful demonstrators in the 1960s or the prisons fill will non-violent black men in the 1980s and 90s, leads me to conclude that those “rights” were often handed out sparingly.

So imagine the collective trauma and the stories people passed through their communities that allowed them to hold their heads up and see themselves as fully human when most everyone else did not agree. Without getting sacchrine and drawing on white guilt, I think that reading the post 1865 history of black America is the only way to fully envision how remarkable it is that this community remained both strong and proud.

Let me help make this more real. Consider the mythology that a child must create to explain how he or she is still a wonderful person in spite of the fact that that child’s parents have told him or her repeatedly to look in the mirror and see worthless, good for nothing trash. Sure, they might have an endearing uncle or neighbor who warns not to listen, who tries to reassure with statements like, “Don’t listen to him, honey, you’re really quite beautiful. You’re a little princess.” Unfortunately, it is not difficult to imagine that for all but a handful of such child victims of parental brutality such words understandibly fall on deaf ears.

Back to the African American community.

Throughout slavery there was a black professional class — doctors, dentists, lawyers, professors and teachers. It was small but it offered hope and an alternative vision for some. The end of slavery marked a relatively small uptick in possibility (since not much really changed in 1865), and some expansion of that hope in the black community. Over time this professional class grew, a black middle class emerged, a unionized and dignified working class started to take root. And then there were black mayors and CEOs and Generals and Congressional Representatives and even two Secretaries of State.

But it wasn’t the mountaintop. White society never said “not only do we accept you, but actually we want to follow you…so why don’t you lead us all of us.” There is something about that cherished office, the highest in the land, and how giving the keys to a black American has symbolic meaning that cannot be measured. You see, like that broken person who never got that love, there have been just too many black people for whom those other achievements were not enough. Almost…but not quite.

This is the ultimate welcoming to Americans of African descent, the one that far too many have wanted but, I can safely say, never expected so suddenly. And it is why black Americans by the millions are feeling as though they can finally unpack their bags and make themselves at home.

As someone who has spent nearly twenty years on the front lines of race and ethnic relations in the United States, I can say with confidence that this is really big.

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