What Does the Obama Election Mean to You?
Within the framework of the mission of the National Underground Railroad Center, the election of Barack Obama as the first person of color to be President of the United States is of surpassing historical importance.
For many citizens — whites as well as blacks — the election signals the healing of a long-festering wound in our national psyche: the wound of the legacy of slavery that for too long prevented African Americans from fully participating as equal members of society. The promise of equality, as it emerged in the aftermath of the Civil War 143 years ago, was delayed, postponed and opposed until passage of landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But even then, rights guaranteed in the law did not always or everywhere translate into full acceptance or acknowledgment. While voters claimed that they had gotten “over race,” it was clear from the meager number of blacks elected to national office (only one African American U.S. Senator in the 20th Century) that the white majority, for whatever reason, could not or would not affirm the principle of racial equality. Just how much of a struggle it has been for blacks in America to achieve equality is poignantly described in this New York Times article.
Today, with the nation grappling with two wars and confronting an economic crisis that is prompting fear of another Great Depression, voters have placed their confidence and trust in a man with an inspiring vision of hope and inclusion and a clear purpose to bring the nation together in common cause. The parallel to another, now distant time, is worth remarking upon: in 1861, with the United States in crisis, voters turned to a man with inspiring vision and clear purpose to prevent the nation from splitting apart. Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois, became the nation’s 16th President and set in motion actions that not only changed the course of history, but opened the long, winding path that has now culminated in the election of an African American as President of the United States.
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There is much analysis and opinion online and in print about the meaning and significance of the Presidential election. Tom Friedman’s column in the New York Times is especially relevant in the way he links Obama’s election to America’s long struggle with the vestiges of slavery. Also, here’s an editorial from Galesburg, Illinois, about the symbolic meaning of Obama’s victory.
“Our nation’s racial wounds have not disappeared, but in one day — Nov. 4, 2008 — Americans put distance between the horrors and civil injustices that haunt our past.” Tom Martin, Editor, Galesburg (IL) Register-Mail
We welcome your thoughts on this historic moment. Please post your comments and thoughts about what this election means to you.
The outcome of this election has made me so incredibly proud to be an American! YES WE CAN!
I am not sure that I agree that in 1861 Lincoln was elected to unify the nation. While his actions certainly changed the course of history, America as a whole was not ready to live out the true meaning of its creed and an entire race of people in some ways continued to suffer inequality and a form of enslavement that saw their fundamental rights denied.
I am thankful, however, on this day in history we have transcended as a nation our bad angels to let our better angels define the future. This is a time to celebrate the collective good will and sound judgment of all Americans as well as the exemplary leadership of president elect, Barak Obama.
As a new citizen, I was proud to be able to cast my vote in this historic election. It serves as a reminder to our youth that through diligence, hard work and empathy for others, we can persevere.
Leadership has no age or color. Enough people in the electorate recognized that the philosophy of the Republicans is bankrupt and that Barack Obama represents a needed correction. He has the presence, disposition and principles of a leader, which is something this nation has lacked for at least 8 years. I like that he represents both white and black America, racially and philosophically. He seems to truly understand how to bring people together. E Pluribus Unum was the perfect phrase to use in his speech at Grant Park. When I drove down the street yesterday and saw that on a chiropractor’s business sign, I was moved and remembered what it is like to be again proud of where we live. Even John McCain seemed worn out by the politics of fear and degradation that has dominated the discourse. While watching a news piece about children in a Los Angeles school, it struck me that until Obama’s election white children could easily imagine that they can be president, because it’s been done. Now, children of any color can imagine it the same way. They benefitted most from the message of hope. I hope that President Obama has the support of his party to make the kinds of change that over the long term will improve the working and living conditions and future of low, working and lower middle class Americans. His humility is not a sign of weakness, but of strength of character and vision. What a change that the American people rewarded themselves by electing a man like him.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION NIGHT 2008
( 2ND DRAFT)
TONIGHT IS A GOOD NIGHT
FOR WHITE MOTHERS OF BLACK SONS:
WE WHO WERE MORE BRAVE THAN STRONG,
WHO DARED TO STARE OUR OWN RACISM IN THE FACE,
THEN REACH AROUND TO LOVE
THE BROWN SKINNED CHILDREN
IN OUR BELLIES.
THOSE BEAUTIFUL BABIES
WHOSE PLACENTAS DUG FIERCELY
INTO UTERINE WALLS,
AND PUSHED THEIR MOTHERS
TO EXTREMES
OF DYSFUNCTION.
LUMINOUS CHILDREN,
BROUGHT BY NURSES WITH SURPRISED FACES
TO EXHAUSTED,
AMAZED
AND MUTINOUS WHITE MOTHERS.
WE PUSHED THESE BABES IN STROLLERS
THROUGH GAGGLES OF ENVIOUS WHITE WOMEN,
(“OH, WHERE COULD THEY GET ONE?” )
AND ANGRY BLACK WOMEN WHO KNEW
WE DIDN’T DESERVE
SUCH GORGEOUS CHILDREN.
WE TOOK DEEP BREATHS AND PRAYED,
THAT EVEN WHITE MOMS
COULD RAISE BLACK SONS
INTO GOOD MEN
WHO KNEW CLEARLY WHO THEY WERE!
MOSTLY WE DID THIS ALONE,
WITHOUT MUCH HELP FROM
THE FATHERS
OR GRANDPARENTS OF ANY HUE.
WE SEARCHED FOR DECENT HOUSING,
(WHICH NEIGHBORHOOD?)
AND JOBS WHERE OUR CHILDREN’S PICTURES
ON OUR DESKS
WOULDN’T GET US FIRED.
WE SEARCHED
FOR STRONG BLACK MEN
TO BEFRIEND OUR CHILDREN,
BUT OFTEN FOUND
NOT EVEN ONE.
WE SCREWED UP,
LOST JOBS,
LOST HOMES.
WE WEPT WITH ANGER
AND WITH FEAR.
AND WEPT WITH JOY,
OFTEN ALONE.
TONIGHT I SIT
ALONE AGAIN,
AND WEEP TO WATCH
A DEAD WHITE MOTHER’S
BEAUTIFUL BLACK SON,
REACH, AGAIN,
AROUND OUR FEAR
AND HOLD OUR FUTURE
AND OUR EARTH
IN CAREFUL,
GRIEVING HANDS.
C. PALLINE PLUM 2008
Breaking Through: From grievance to contribution
By Johnathan M. Holifield, president/CEO, Urban League of Greater Cleveland
November 8, 2008
In the days after Senator Barack H. Obama was elected president of the United States, I have been asked numerous times, what does this mean to you? Such is a reasonable inquiry of the chief executive of the Urban League, Cleveland’s oldest community-based movement to achieve social, education and economic empowerment. Fundamentally, President-elect Obama’s win means that Black people have an opportunity to unmistakably breakthrough, to evolve our American citizenship from 20th century grievance to 21st century contribution.
As we learned during grammar school English lessons, the subject is something that does things and the object is something that has things done to it. For centuries, Black Americans have struggled to become included subjects, rather than excluded objects, of the American experience.
This enduring crusade manifests as a long-standing grievance against the land of our birth. The premise of which is clearly stated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott case. Making possibly the most definitively damning policy statement ever issued by the U.S. government, concerning the status of Blacks in America, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote:
They had … been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.
This abhorrent belief, expressed as national policy, is the crux of the grievance. Since the days of the peculiar institution of slavery, and especially in the 150 years after the Dred Scott Decision, the nation has grappled and countless lives have been given to constructively resolve the grievance.
Protracted struggle produced the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, Brown v. Board of Education, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The events resulted in Black people successfully acquiring all rights and privileges – the tools of democracy – to which every American is entitled.
The unique genius of the American republic and our constitutional form of government is that the nation is not on a fixed course. The Constitution, and freedoms it guarantees, empowers Americans with the capacity to choose our fate.
However, as President-elect Obama’s historic success demonstrates, resolving the grievance through acquisition of rights and privileges is only the middlegame, not the endgame. Although the middlegame is an indispensable step toward the desired end, it is not the end.
President-elect Obama’s candidacy and election were all about the endgame. He won the rare chance to contribute everything he is, and what he can become, to the most powerful office in the world. This is the breakthrough opportunity, to profoundly shift from the 20th century middlegame of grievance to the 21st century endgame of contribution.
The endgame for Black people, indeed, for all Americans, is to contribute our full measure and potential “to form a more perfect union.” It is crucial to know the difference between exercising rights and privileges and using the tools of democracy to contribute our best selves to our communities and the nation.
The endgame for Americans is akin to Maslovian self-actualization, where we must be all that we can be. This is America’s raison d’être, our reason for being.
Black Americans can never retreat from relentlessly addressing any vestiges of the grievance expressed in the Dred Scott case – and we will not. Yet, with the severe challenges facing humanity, now more than ever, our renewed and central focus must be on the endgame, making our highest and best contribution to overcome the challenges.
What will we build with the tools of democracy that we have heroically fought to secure? The best is yet to come. President-elect Obama’s ascendancy is just one of many extraordinary steps Black Americans will take in the 21st century, which we shall call the Contribution Century.
I want to echo Jamie’s comment about being proud to be an American at this moment in history. Being overseas in Germany and Switzerland this summer it was very enlightening to hear outside opinions and views of our political system. It would be an understatement to say that our country has lost credibility in the last eight years, but strongly feel the election of Barack Obama is a significant step towards gaining back the respect that’s been lost.
Barack Obama’s election signals so many things that offer hope and insppiration. The power of an individual (Barack) to achieve excellence supported, as all of us must be, by many others along the way. The dynamisim of youth and elders too to help forge the way to a better, more inclusive future and world that respects the right of every individual to achieve their God-given potential. It brings to life the reality that change for the better can be achieved but it takes time and courage and persistence and is built brick by bick, by the efforts of countless people, known and unknown, striving to do what they think is right even if difficult and unpopular.
With all the challenges we face, we are blessed I believe, no matter our party affiliation. to have come through an election that offers us the leadership of a person of unquestioned intellect and high ideals combined with a pragmatism and ability and instinct to keep learning that I believe and pray will serve us well.
That my daughter, who is biracial, will never no a time when someone who looks like can’t be president.
That my daughter, who is biracial, will never know a time when someone who looks like her can’t be president.
Barak Hussien Obama is nothing but an empty suit voicing platitudes of change. the only change he will bring is the utter downfall of this nation. How ignorant are comments about his race and”it’s about time a black man” got to the White House. Who cares about his color? The content of his ideas is vapid and I question his patriotism.
I loved the poem. it summed up everything I feel in the first line.
It was a good night for white mothers with black sons…but that’s not a new thing for me. White mothers have good nights with white sons too. So is it the audcity of hoping this will trickle down like economics to black mothers with black sons? My grandmother once told me hope springs eternal and love is a many splenid thing. I just wish I knew what she was talking about.
As a Canadian who is enthralled with American Politics, this is IT, Obama as President is the best possible thing that could happen to a world in need of HOPE. People from all over the world are clued to CNN at this most important time in history. CNN keep up the great coverage as we watch this great man lead mankind to a better day.