On Obama

I keep thinking about Obama’s speech. I feel as though I want to write something, I want to say something, but really I am just filled with musings and awe. Different thoughts keep going through my head. So I am going to write and hopefully sort some of it out here.

I watched Obama’s speech live Tuesday morning. I am a huge fan, even with my five classes and two kids I did a little campaigning for him before the Arizona primary and I attended his rally. I am beginning to realize why I feel so strongly about Barack Obama. I trust him. Not because he is black. He seems honest and good. He seems slightly naïve in a way that is refreshing in a climate of cynics who don’t know how to hope. He actually seems to believe that all in all Americans are good, that this is a good place and that our wildest dreams can come true. He believes that honesty and transparency are best. Because of this hope, this purity of purpose a black man with a middle name of Hussein is running to be the President of the United State of America. He is bucking the odds and changing the world as I know it.

I think another reason why Obama is important to me is because last semester I spent a lot of time learning more and more about the dark history of hatred towards blacks. I read about men who will not be listed in the history books who died because of honest mistakes that were deemed offensive. Many black men and women lived day in and day out hoping not to get on the wrong side of a white person, because it could cost them their lives.

I learned from my aunt Vera that blacks could not get loans. She explained that this was why Booker worked at Lusco’s for so many years, saving every penny, so that he could open Booker’s Place. How many people today can say that? How many people save every penny to pay cash for anything? How many people have no choice?

One of the ideas that has sort of rocked my foundation is that blacks today are not playing on a level playing field because we come from those who had little opportunity. Maybe I should have gotten this before. But I didn't. I am not looking for a handout or a leg up. I am not hunting for affirmative action to solve all of my problems. I just don’t want to be put down either.

The point I make with all this is that I came into 2008 weighed down by the hate I’d been reading about and the absence of a level playing field. Discouraged about the damage that has been done to the national dialogue on race, I was burnt out and feeling bitter. I found myself seeing racial inequality everywhere, even when maybe something else was at play. I have always been one of those people who never thought that race was a factor if I didn’t get a job or didn’t get invited or wasn’t taken seriously. I never “played the race card”. My research taught me that maybe I had been a little naïve.

I came into 2008 needing something to believe in. I needed to believe that there was hope in our nation’s views and our dialogue on race. Then, on January 3, 2008, Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucus. Iowa. Do they even have black people there? He had to be offering something more than the “color alternative.” I got on the net, started watching the debates, started listening and learning and I realized that I believed in him, more than I could ever believe in Hillary. I realized then what I love the most about him is that I respect him. It is not a stretch to do this; I am not ignoring some obvious flaw. I can believe he is good and that makes my soul smile.

In Malcolm X’s eulogy Ossie Davis refers to Malcolm as “our Prince – our own black shining Prince.” I don’t know if I will always feel this way, but this week, since I heard that speech I realized that Obama embodies this for me. He is the hope that maybe the past is behind us. Maybe we can come together, regardless of color, and work together. He is the hope that whites who only see blacks in the crime section of their local paper will understand that we too can be great and that Oprah is not just a fluke.

The pain is still there. But in pain, we have to work together. Our problems are no longer limited to racial lines. There are whites who have been taken advantage of and who have lost their pensions, their healthcare, and their homes. The story of racism in America was always about power. Whites used to have all the power. Now, corporations and politicians have all the power. Whites, blacks, Mexicans, and all groups of people need to stand together. Our pasts are not the same, but many of our grievances are.