Obama: aligning reality and hope?

In an Op-Ed piece yesterday, David Brooks described the Iowa primary victories of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee as earthquakes. He cited various elements of the earth-shattering nature of Obama’s win, only one of which was his being black. But it is this aspect of the win that makes it, as Brooks says, one “you’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by.”

Only fifty years have passed since this country’s civil rights movement began; only forty since the federal government passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and thus committed itself to equalizing the legal status of black and white (and all other) Americans. Just two generations later, the prospect of the American people voting into the top federal office a black man has seemed to many, until this week, a left-wing daydream.

Personally, I have thought it had a chance of being viable all along. I wasn’t sure this country was ready to elect a black president, but I leaned toward thinking it was. Look at the facts: Since the 1920s, just over 100 African Americans have served in the United States Congress (interestingly, almost all were Representatives; only three, including Obama, have been Senators). This is no small deal; being elected to Congress seems like (and is) a far-off reality to most Americans, no matter their background. Plus, one-quarter of those 100 were elected in the South, which is thought to be the most racist part of the country. Having grown up in the South, I know that racism is still alive there in many ways. Yet Atlanta, for example, is often considered the city in the country with the most opportunity for blacks, as it has large black upper and middle classes and black professionals in top positions in every industry. It’s been electing black mayors since the 1970s. And this is no problem. The non-black people there don’t object; I don’t think they even think much about it. It’s just the world as they know it.

Obviously the presidency is something different than any other political office; at the end of the day, all accountability for the nation rests on the president’s shoulders, and I can imagine that some of the southerners who have accepted their local leaders being black might still dislike the thought of their president being so. But having lived 18 years in Atlanta and another 10 in Boston, I have to say, it’s the rest of the country that’s had me wondering whether Obama could really get elected. By that I mean, in the South, black and white Americans are used to the thought of each other; they’ve lived alongside each other for a very long time. But there remain today many all-white parts of the country, and while they may think they’re racism-free, I wonder sometimes if that’s just in theory. As an anecdote to that effect: At my first job, I became good friends with a co-worker who had lived her whole life—childhood, college, and post-college—in Massachusetts. At age 24, she admitted to me that the IT guy at work was the first black person she had ever met; as I gaped, she acknowledged that my roommate was also the first gay person she’d met. Now to her credit, she never showed any sort of discomfort around either of them; I don’t think she had any prejudice in her. But they did still give her pause. And how many people have you encountered who are a little bit afraid of the unfamiliar? I have encountered a lot.

However, Massachusetts floored me in 2006 by electing the second black governor in U.S. history. In that year, the state’s population was only 7 percent black. In comparison, the southern states ranged from 15 to 32 percent black, with most in the upper 20s. I was disappointed to learn that in the South, an African American had not yet held the governorship; but I was delightfully shocked that of all states, rather-white Massachusetts had been the one to lead the pack toward change on that front. Maybe, that made me think, the fact that not-being-racist is only theoretical in places where the population is all one ethnicity should not worry me so; maybe putting theory into practice is just as easy as it sounds, and more people than I think are capable of supporting the unfamiliar when it offers something positive, whether they know much about it or not. I certainly think that’s what Iowa shows us; the man is talking about a new approach to politics, and people want that above all else. That they can either put aside their feelings about ethnicity or aren’t any longer hindered by them—that either of these things is the case is remarkable in a country that has supported equality for such a short time. That either is the case gives me hope. But it is a cautious hope, as I think the prospect of a woman, a Jew, or a Muslim getting elected to the presidency is still a slim one. (Though again, I’ll be thrilled if Ms. Clinton proves my concerns wrong.)