Obama's imprint goes something like this: defeat racism by ignoring it. Obama has defanged racism by neglect.
And accordingly, there's going to be tremendous pressure within the black community to question this newfound freedom. Already, today's black leaders are cautious and quick to remind Americans that Obama won the presidency because of the debt paid by many years of struggle.
Cornel West says in an interview with the Miami Herald:
"Our agenda still requires a highlighting of the disproportion of suffering and misery of black people... We are going to have to put pressure on to let him know we are part of his public interest, too...I will speak and I will organize and I will mobilize and be part of pressure groups seeking justice for black folks, but never stopping there."
Michael Eric Dyson writes in the LA Times:
"We should not be seduced by the notion that Obama's presidency signals the end of racism, the civil rights movement, the struggle for black equality or the careers of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton."
While to many degrees these assertions are accurate, West and Dyson's statements hide another idea. And it is this: This is a game changer. And this is not a changer about a "post-racial" or "post-racist" America; this is a changer about the way blacks operate and view themselves.
What Obama has done is so extraordinary that it calls into question the entire project of black advocates and intellectuals preoccupied by the question of racism (reveal it, explain it, shame it). What Dyson later refers to (in the link above) as the "incalculable psychic boost" of youngsters growing up seeing Obama, is a whole lot more than that. This is not about getting boosted but rather about finding a tactic that works.
More specifically and for example, there are two sides of being a victim: the wronged side and the side of insight. If insight is the transcendent side, then the victim side is the side that has not been transformed, gotten over, accepted the wrong or whatever the negative was. Obama's imprint is on the side of insight. It's a stark choice. One stays in jail, the other has stepped out.
There are competing agendas of course. Black leaders want to retain their relevance and platform. This however disempowers the individual who is told that he is up against a society working against him. It deemphasizes his ability to change events, to mold the world to his will. This is the Obama imprint.
A New York City teen I know, grew up tough (his mother was brutal and abusive); he got his girlfriend pregnant and is now struggling to support her and his child working two jobs. The Obama victory was an amazing event to him. The old black leader might counsel this teenager: You see Obama, he's special; what's he going to do for you? He owes you something. But the Obama imprint, or what I might say to this boy-man is this: Now despite everything you have been through, everything you have endured and done, now you have proof that anything is possible. There is a huge gap between here and where you want to be (if you can bear the thought of hoping for more for yourself) but you alone must cover it. Nothing can stop you.
This is freedom. And it's quite frightening. But it's a whole lot better that being a slave.
Slavery seems like such an antiquated term and yet freedom and slavery are really what I am talking about. And this is not to diminish the black the experience. I mean actually to highlight that blacks have a lot of information to share about strength, endurance and beauty. But the depth of our understanding (and mercy) is just beginning to show itself. Our self-pity, sadness or anger over what West calls "suffering", however real, is actually an obstacle.
Even the black literary giants will have to make a new literature for our updated situation. We've spent a lot of time going over and over and over the wounds -- like a fly stuck in a box. I don't think any of us expected this quick turn in our story. A recent review of Toni Morrison's latest novel, A Mercy senses this shortcoming:
This author's early novels were breakthroughs into the experience of black Americans as refracted in the poetic and indignant perceptions of a black woman from Lorain, Ohio; as Morrison moves deeper into a more visionary realism, a betranced pessimism saps her plots of the urgency that hope imparts to human adventures...Varied and authoritative and frequently beautiful though the language is, it circles around a vision, both turgid and static, of a new world turning old, and poisoned from the start.
And, the limits of our religious traditions will be tested too, the old time religion that taught blacks to wait for 'the kingdom' or a better time. What if the better time is now? It's now. Blacks have to rethink the place of preachers who advocate justice but not the rights of gays. Blacks have to come to terms with the gap between what they know intuitively about faith and God and what has become culturally acceptable to think, value or believe. This is the struggle of the larger culture as well, but blacks know better, if they can learn the lesson (transform the experience) of being victimized.
But for all this collective talk, let's face it, blacks are individuals. By history and fate blacks are loners, a tribe of mavericks and rogues. Now, my wish for that teenager is for him to know that wherever he finds himself, that's where a leader is.