The President-Elect
I want to preface these remarks by assuring my listeners that if President Obama makes one false move, my producers and I will hold him to account and scrutinize him with the same fervor as we have President Bush. Yes we will!
I've obviously had days to think about this remarkable moment in American history and all the things have been said by now. As Desmond Tutu said in the Washington Post on Sunday, November 9th, no one of my generation thought he'd see the end of the Soviet Union or the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of a post-apartheid South Africa--as he ranked the Obama achievement with those milestones. I have thought this over a lot and I always believed that a black candidate of Obama's qualities would emerge--I just never thought there'd be enough white people who would vote for such a person, and now I'm very proud and pleased to know differently. Yes, I know that Obama lost the white vote--but I also know that he wouldn't have won without the significant number of whites who voted for him. As we all know, vast numbers of white voters overcame age-old prejudices---for whatever reasons--to cast their first votes for an African-American.
I grew up in segregationist Louisville, Kentucky. Jim Crow is not a page in a history book to me--I was there and I lived it. When I was a little kid, my mother would take me on the bus to go downtown to shop in department stores where black people were not be allowed to try on the clothes for sale. Those stores had four restrooms and two water fountains. I was a little kid and couldn't read the signs that told me which restrooms and which water fountains were designated "colored." When I chose the "wrong" one I'd get a whipping.
I loved my father, but I was repulsed by his bigotry. He believed black people were not fully human. They were not black people to my father--they were niggers. That was a word he passed on to me and I had to un-learn it. For this I give thanks to my five-years-older brother Joe, who told me about this fellow named Martin Luther King back in the 1950's when we were both still children. Nowadays we talk about being "on the right side of history." Brother Joe and I chose to be there at the expense of our father's love. Dad would even race-bait me. We'd be watching the Ed Sullivan Show and when a black performer came on, he'd utter some racial epithet to provoke a response from me. Once I caught on, I'd deny him a reaction. And here's the great irony: If my father had been alive last Tuesday, he'd have voted for Barack Obama because he was a yellow-dog Democrat who voted for EVERY Democrat. I am not, and have voted for Republicans and Democrats.
White people who voted for Obama are in a self-congratulatory euphoria--and I will not disturb them from that. Obama made a lot of white converts and, considering the man's enormous gifts, I'm not not surprised by that. I'm actually more surprised by the number of black converts. The African-American community was slow to warm to Barak Obama--or to even accept him as a black person, a phenonemon that vexes white people. We see him as a a mixed-race fellow who self-identifies as a black. African-Americans originally saw him as someone not descended from American slaves and therefore someone who'd not shared their experience. Obama had to win over black America AFTER he'd won over white people in the Iowa caucuses. That completely knocks me down! After Iowa, black people embraced Obama and started to believe.
All of the OMG pieces have already been written about the Obama victory and most of them were wonderful to read. This is deservedly a moment in history to be celebrated. But Obama may come to wonder why we were so happy to elect him. He now has to deal with a pile of crud that no one since Franklin Roosevelt has been asked to take on. I wish him luck, but I also promise him that if he screws up I'll be on him like a blanket.
As for John McCain, I totally confess that I am one of those Washington reporters who has swooned over the guy. I have interviewed him numerous times and have been totally charmed by his candor. I would have been very happy to vote for John McCain, but somewhere along the road he got some very bad advice--or maybe the decision was his. In his race against Barack Obama, John McCain went totally negative and became someone I didn't know. He lied, distorted and followed the old Lee Atwater Republican playbook. That strategy failed, and I hope he uses his remaining time in public life to become the guy he used to be.
And one more thing about my dad who played catch with me and came to all my high school football games when he knew I'd see action only if we were up by forty points. In the end, he'd have have voted for Obama for all the right reasons. He died in 1991 at age 78. He was a youngster who had more maturing to do. He'd have redeemed himself if he hadn't run out of time.
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I also have been thinking about how my father and mother, and older brother, would have felt about Obama's election. I wish they could have lived to see it happen.
We who grew up during the civil rights movement know that curing prejudice is a generational issue. Whether it be racism, homophobia, or the old Catholic-Protestant thing, people seldom change after they have reached adulthood. Einstein said, "Common sense is just the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18." Adolescents get a lot of the opinions that they will carry for the rest of their lives from their parents, but luckily not all. The media, peers, and even teachers have an influence, too.
The civil rights movement is a long way behind us now, and each of the generations that have grown up since then has a smaller proportion of people who are infected by racism. Young people seem to share the attitude of the song, "I ain't going to spend my life being a color." The demographics of the white vote, particularly in rural areas, shows how much difference there is between the over 50's and the under 30's.
You and I were lucky enough to be on the right side of history. To go beyond this, we should try to raise our time-horizon beyond our own lifespan, and to become aware of what other prejudices we still have, that generations to come will wince about. Even old guys can still grow.
".. if President Obama makes one false move, my producers and I will hold him to account and scrutinize him with the same fervor as we have President Bush..."
Sonebody scrutinized Bush or held him accountable?
Yes, I guess I missed that!
cont'd
A final thought concerning race relations involves the uproar during campaign season regarding remarks made by Rev Wright. Even though he is a bit older than me, we both experienced the days of Jim Crow. Any AA that lived through those days carries some hostility that sometimes comes to the surface. Even though I do not know Rev. Wright, I am certain he has had firsthand experiences like the ones I had as a kid. Those early experiences taint your perspective throughout your entire life.
Thank you for sharing that. Your experiences and others like them always called my heart to the South. Now that I'm here, I marvel at what has changed, and I try to wrap my brain around what hasn't.
I sit in my church twice a week & rejoice in the diversity of our membership. In an assembly at my kids' school last week, I couldn't help but wonder that just a few decades ago, almost half the people gathered in the gym would have been forbidden by law to be there.
I'm so thankful for those who shed their blood for their country; not only our brave military overseas, but also civilians at home who put their lives on the line so that all in America could be treated as equals. We have a long way to go, but I pray and believe we're gaining speed.
As an AA born here in the south in the mid-forties I saw the harshness of the "Jim Crow" mentality first hand. In fact I had a front row seat during my teenage years and into my early twenties. The vile nature of that set of experiences lives in my mind yet to this day. As a young boy I recall walking along the highway in route to my grandparents house and had my first life threatening (or, at least I thought it was) experience with a white person. As I walked along this highway a car approached me from the rear driving very slowly. As I turned and looked to my rear I saw and heard white men yelling insults and threats. The threats continued as the car slowly passed me by. Then about 100 ft ahead the car stopped and two or three men got out yelling insults at me and one finally yelled "give me my gun". Well, at that point I ran off the road and into the woods. As I ran I heard several shots fired followed by laughter in a celebratory manner.
Acts of this nature were the typical humiliating experiences endured by AAs on a daily basis. I could write a book on life during those years but choose not to dwell on that ugle phase of my life.
Cont'd
Bob, you were *the* voice of Morning Edition to me; this piece reminds of how much I appreciated your sensibility and judgment.
And I look at all the big cities, and the unions, and the African Americans and the education system and I wonder what has the DNC done foe them?
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As an African American female, It is not so much as anyone doing things for us it is being able to know when and who we can call upon when help is needed. It is such a misconception that AAs are not self sufficient and we as a people ( all people of every background) need to stand up and counter people when things are done or said about certain things. Sure we have cultural differences but we are so much more alike than we are different. Maybe we can get there together..
Thanks for the article, awesome job!
Really nice rendering of events and personal experiences. We all have our stories. Perhaps telling them now will be a step in the right direction. Thanks , Mr. Edwards. I am a Louisvillian,too , and it's hard to explain to folks what it's like here. You did a fine job.
As a fellow Louisvillian, I read this and thought "Ouch!!" because Bob absolutely nailed the state of race relations in the Louisville of his youth (just slightly distant from my own). I like to think we've come a long way since then, but that's only in relation to where we started from. But I now have greater hope than ever that my city can come together, because we just did: In the middle of a very red state, Louisville went for Barack Obama! That makes me very proud.
"... I will hold him to account and scrutinize him with the same fervor as we have President Bush."
Yeh, just like you scrutinized him while he made the false case for the mayhem in Iraq and numerous other occasions. I think it was more like "scared witless".
See Bart Motes's Profile
I enjoyed this article. Thank you, sir.
interesting perspective.
with all the damage inflicted on the US in the last eight years i look at the solid south and i keep asking
what is it going to take? what are those folks voting on?surely they must realize the republican administration has not served them well.
And I look at all the big cities, and the unions, and the African Americans and the education system and I wonder what has the DNC done foe them?
What a bizarre combination of scarecrows and scapegoats. "The big cities"? "The unions"? And the DNC is not the same thing as Democratic Presidents or Senators. And the Democratic philosophy is not "I've got mine; screw you (and no queers)", which IS the unofficial slogan of the Republicans.
Northstar11 made a good point about how Republicans tend to vote against their own economic interests because they're hoodwinked into voting based on wedge issues. Your response seems to be some scattershot attack of the usual tropes. I'm surprised you didn't mention the United Nations and the Dixie Chicks, too.
I had a great uncle (in the UK) who died not so long ago, in his late eighties. One of the last things I remember him saying to me was that of the unanswered questions in his life, one concerned the origin of black people. He genuinely couldn't understand where black people came from, because as far as he could see, they weren't in the Bible. I've never forgotten that comment. It somehow reeks of ignorance and offensiveness, but it came from the mouth of someone I thought of as an intelligent man.
I don't mean to make a comment for or against religion. It just connects with that "not fully human" nonsense that you've mentioned. And it says something about the great - and yet sometimes bizarre - journeys that we all have to make in the world.
The real irony is, of course, that we're all African, for Africa is the cradle of humanity. Environmental adaptations such as increased or decreased melanin, etc., are simply that: minor variations that have somehow come to represent fundamental differences to small-minded people.
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