An Obama Victory Will Itself Reassert US Leadership: First Person of Color to Govern Any Country with a White Majority, Ever

If Barack Obama wins today, the world knows that he will be the first African-American president. In a country borne with the scourge of slavery, that struggled through a 100 years of nullification and interposition after the legal basis of slavery had been eliminated, the election of an African-American man to the presidency is an achievement for which no description is hyperbole: earthquake, transformational, monumental, whatever your pleasure.

The chasm Obama will have leapt is enormous. Not only has the US never had a person of color as president, with the one exception of John F. Kennedy, the presidents have all been protestant and mostly of Anglo-Saxon origin. That is, no woman, no person from southern Europe, no other non-protestant, has ever been President of the United States.

But, it is even much more than that -- no non-white person has governed any country that had a white majority. The converse, of course, is not true.

I have earlier written ("Obama's Millennials--83 Million Strong", June 30, 2008) that the human brain is wired to defend against "otherness" and then rationalize that reaction. The 78 million boomers grew up in an era of what might be called "Left-brain" equality -- granting/securing rights to minorities because it was logically and rationally the right thing to do. That, however, did not provide them the experience to reject skin color as "other" at the "Right-brain" emotional level.

When the Supreme Court (Brown v Board of Education) declared separation to be inherently unequal, they were focusing on segregation's negative impact on black children. White children, robbed of the opportunity of seeing black children as part of the natural order, and thus "self" and not "other", were also negatively impacted.

The human species experiences the world ~70% visually. Thus, overcoming right-brain reactions to the visual perception of different skin color as "other" required another generation in which the legal rights were established, and thus integration appeared to be 'the natural order' from childhood.

The McCain campaign was predicated on the strategy of making Obama "other", and thus suspicious. That is why they made the absurd claims of 'socialism', not because of Obama's economic program is even colorably socialism, but because 'socialism' is foreign. Focusing on Barack's middle name? During the 1930s the forbears of these filth spreaders said that Franklin Roosevelt was Jewish -- that his 'real' name was Rosenfeld. In those days Jews were a 'foreign element' with divided loyalties. Sound familiar?

Note that McCain never said to his rallies that Barack Obama is a good American, never uttered a whimper of respect for him. His only positive reference to Obama is when he, McCain, spoke to the NAACP during the election cycle. And then, he only referred to him as "my opponent", he never mentioned his name positively. Pathetic, pernicious...but, with McCain's attempt to exploit racism by seeding doubts and suspicions, predictable.

If Obama wins, it will be as if his victory were the combination of the right-brains of the millennials and the left-brains of enough of their parents.

Like Jackie Robinson, or even like Sidney Poitier in "Guess Who's Coming for Dinner", Barack Obama had to be nearly perfect, a real competitor on the one hand, but not angry or combative on the other.

The Swedish sociologist, Gunnar Myrdahl, noted at the beginning of the civil rights movement that, as bad as our race relations were, the United States was the only nation trying to deal directly with this problem. Blacks had watched immigrant group after immigrant group suffer a generation of discrimination, but then get integrated into society -- so long as their visual appearance did not trigger the "other" reaction. For people of color it has been a much longer and more difficult journey.

Although Obama's victory will not mark the end of that journey, it will catapult the US far ahead of its European brethren. This is not just of symbolic significance -- the 9/11 attacks arose not in the Middle East itself, but among people who had become radicalized by being marginalized and alienated from European societies. Islamic suburbs in France erupted in violent demonstrations, not dissimilar to the race riots in US cities in the 1960s.

If Obama wins today, the US will have shown the way. Let us hope that other societies, within themselves first, take heart from that example and start the long process of healing the wounds that come from de-humanizing those who appear different. Perhaps young people will think again before they allow old men convince them to commit suicide based upon the fear, or hatred, of those who appear to be "other".

Of course, the real "enemies" of mankind are what they have always been, the old four horsemen of the apocalypse: pestilence, disease, war and famine. Modern technologies enable us to solve all of them. Only people and their fears, fanned by cowards, stand in the way.

An Obama victory today will be the first re-assertion of moral authority for the United States in 8 years.

If Barack wins, it will not be the last.

Comments

[ToonMoene]

> Although Obama's victory will not mark the end of that journey, it will catapult the US
> far ahead of its European brethren.

Exactly. I already felt this pain far in advance: In February I was in the US for a meeting of a Standardization group. As Hilary was still competitive at that time, I ask the obvious question: Hay, In Europe I have been voting for a women for the 31 years I'm allowed to vote - what's so special about Hilary.

To which the reaction was: And when, exactly, had the Netherlands a female prime minister ?

Well, that shut me up.

The same goes for black people - I have voted for black people (when appropriate) for my whole life.

Yet you've never seen a black prime minister of the Netherlands.

[ Amazingly enough, we now have a Moroccan mayor of Rotterdam, with a solid endorsement
of his Jewish colleague in Amsterdam - but that's all we reached ... ]

So do not underestimate what the US democracy wrought last Tuesday.

[RRonin]

Before we throw our arms out of their sockets in patting ourselves on the back, let us remember that this courageous man had THE AUDACITY OF HOPE to put his trust in "the better angels of our nature"...­.

[BluePrideSMW]

I've called it a tsunami of legacy for Obama. He understands it himself, that it's not about him. It took the situation getting so bad in order to have an opportunity so prime. Anything less would have elected Hillary. Unhappy with Bush and willing to change THIS MUCH. With Obama, we get the uniquely magical moments in American history: tremendously grave time and superbly gifted president. He's not great yet, yet he's potentially very great. We still have Jeri Ryan to thank!

Moms Mabley sings Abraham, Martin & John:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge32xtm23rQ

[Paul Abrams - Huffpost Blogger]

I am not so sure I agree with your analysis. Obama beat Hillary a) because of Iraq; b) because he was such a good candidate; and c) because Hillary ran a poor campaign in some respects.
He is beating McCain because of the change mantra, because he, Obama, is such a great candidate and person, and because McCain ran such a despicable campaign. Obama could easily have blown the financial crisis. I would say that if Obama were not near-perfect, he would have lost.

[RRonin]

I've been telling my wife for a solid year now that Jeri Ryan should get an ambassadorship out of an Obama victory, a nice posting like Luxembourg or Monaco....­..

[kapo]

A quiet revolution is underway across the Americas in which the 'Others' are being made a part of the mainstream. In South America it is being articulated as a leftist upsurge, but it is in reality, the people who were excluded from elite status pushing themselves closer to the centres of power.
Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are examples of this. They are using left wing ideological tools to legitimise a racial shift in the distribution of power.
These countries, including the United States, cannot compete on an equal basis with emerging Asian powers which are able to mobilise entire populations to achieve national objectives. Just as a rebalancing of power between men and women can increase the benefits for both, a racial rebalancing can strengthen the whole society. Next stop on this train is a female president. Now that would be really radical.

[RG59U]

Not being an anthropologist, has there ever been a civilization, society, community, tribe, collective, etc. that has done this before on this scale?

The Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the British Empire?

I think if Obama wins, there is something fundamentally new and unique in our world psyche, and will be very proud the United States blazed a new path.

[Zyzzygowski]

The absolute profoundity of the following statement is staggering.

Race matters, and will continue to matter. There is an erosion, yet that erosion slowly continues. Good on us!

"Blacks had watched immigrant group after immigrant group suffer a generation of discrimination, but then get integrated into society -- so long as their visual appearance did not trigger the "other" reaction. For people of color it has been a much longer and more difficult journey."

[Karen Russell - Huffpost Blogger]

Bravo!

[davidly]

The thing that so many Europeans really don't like about America - in spite of the things they do like - is how easily they self reference their moral authority. The worst thing this current administration has done to the US is to cloud the bipartisan sins of the past as if they don't exist, and that history is only a decade long.

[Paul Abrams - Huffpost Blogger]

The major problem is claiming moral authority when it does not exist.
Electing the first Afro-American any place in the world in a country that does not have a non-white majority is a basis for claiming some moral authority.

[davidly]

I understand your point and thank you for your response. I respectfully disagree regarding moral authority, however. I don't really think any nation can, nor should they lay claim to such a thing - if such a thing even exists beyond the perception of pride.

As far as morality in general goes, the good ol' US of A would do themselves a great service were they to spend less on weapons and war (death and destruction), and more on education and healthcare (life and liberty). I'm sorry to say that I am skeptical regarding the former.