The First President Who is Black

The election is over, and America is now forever changed. This is the only way to understand the spectacular rise of Barack Obama. When Obama was born in 1961 segregation was still legal in a third of the nation. The majority of blacks lived in the South, where few could vote, almost none went to integrated schools, and they were barred from public facilities, restaurants, hotels, theaters, amusement parks, public parks, and just about everything else. No black had ever served on the Supreme Court, in a president`s cabinet, or as the elected governor of a state. None had been in the Senate since Reconstruction. None had served as the mayor of a major city. Nor had any ever been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Except for some meaningless third parties, none had ever even considered running for President.

When Obama was born the bloodiest battles of the civil rights movement had yet to be fought and the civil rights martyrs of the decade - Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr. - were still alive. So too were the three young men who would be murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney), Viola Liuzzo, the mother from Detroit who would be murdered at Selma, and the four young girls who would be blown up in the Sixteenth Street Baptists Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Barack Obama was born into an American that was a deeply segregated place. The son of a black father and a white mother, his parents could not even have lived in the same house in 1961 in about 18 different states. Anyone predicting that the son of this union would one day be president would have risked being committed in a mental hospital. The idea of a black president was not just remote, it was impossible to conceive. Only in a science fiction story about an alternative universe could the parents of the baby Barack Obama have thought he would one day be president of the Harvard Law Review, a member of the U.S. Senate, and eventually the primary resident of the White House.

Welcome to the alternative universe of 2008.

An Obama presidency will not end racism. It may in fact lead to some increase in overt racist talk, as those who don't like his policies will blame them on race. But in other ways, an Obama presidency will change the nature of race relations. Whites who said they would never vote for a black man, in the end did just that. The Republican Party, which played the race card so effectively with Willie Horton in 1988, was unable to do so this time. Fringe Republicans and supporters of McCain offered up offensive and nasty racist characterizations of Obama, including distributing handbills that looked like food stamps with Obama on them. The McCain campaign did not denounce these, but neither did it embrace such actions. In a last desperate effort the McCain campaign focused on Obama's former preacher, Rev. Wright. But a radical minister is no Willie Horton, and no one seemed to be much affected by the effort.

Even as he became the first black president, Obama transcended race. His earliest support did not come from the black community, but from upper middle class Americans of all races, who were charmed by his intelligence and thoughtfulness and anxious to find a new political leader in the new century. Obama campaigned on economics, foreign policy, health care, and jobs. He rarely spoke of inequality or civil rights, not because he is not concerned about them, but because he understood that they were not the central issues of the election. Furthermore, he understood that inequality in health care and economic opportunity cannot be overcome until we all have health care and the economy is no longer in free fall. Thus, Obama campaigned on issues that affect all Americans, without regard to race, geography, or class.

Indeed, in the end Obama is not America`s first black president -- he is America`s first president who happens to be black. The difference is huge.

An earlier version of this blog was also posted on the African-American Studies Center of Oxford University Press and is published here with permission of OUP.

The author is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School in Albany, New York and in Fall 2008 is a Visiting Scholar of Law and Politics at Osaka University, in Osaka, Japan.

Read more Election Day Liveblogs, Reaction and Analysis from HuffPost Bloggers

Comments

[Whinger]

A friend of mine once described Barack Obama as being a white man wearing a black skin!

Strange now the white part never gets mentioned in some circles, the color blind see an American!

[SylviaH]

I'm laughing really hard at the comment down the line at the guy who said "He's black? I wish I knew about it before I voted for him".

I feel the same way. I forgot he's black too, mostly because I just didn't see it. He would have gotten my vote if he was yellow, brown, red, or minty green (like I get in the dead of winter).

It's time we moved on with this country and thank goodness I don't have to cry myself to sleep in despair after this election. I could not take another 4 years of Bush's third term. Take that Rove!

[llisa]

I have just always seen Obama as a super-intelligent, calm, steady, rational man who thinks before he speaks. He exhibits family values (he doesn't need to harp on them, he lives them). He is slow to anger, quick to forgive, and trying to bring us all together.

I just saw him as very presidential. I didn't really see him as biracial, the same as I don't see my foster grandson as biracial. I see them as Barach Obama---and Devin--people I care about because of who they are, not because of what they are.

[jackie4444]

Well-said and agreed.

[Retrofuturistic]

I can't help thinking how ironic it will be if the person who saves America from what happened to us in the last eight years is a man who is partly black.

Think about it. After what black people went through in this country, and the person who saves us is biracial....

All of you who are still worried about Obama's race--- think about when you have received kindness from a black person. When you were in the hospital, standing in a line somewhere, or whatever.

[arthur2008]

For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.

[exploder98]

"Happens to be black"

George Carlin anyone? :)

[tomjones44]

Right On!

I was thinking that too!

[deeppeace]

Senator - oops, I mean President - Obama's race is not the first thing I see in him. I see progressive ideas, deliberate thought, compassion, intelligence and integrity. Oh, and yes, he's black, too. That doesn't hurt, but it's one of the last reasons in the world I would give my vote to any candidate. Right down there with gender.

I'm no pollyanna. I know the small-minded among us aren't going to wake up tomorrow embracing him. But I have to hope that over time he will win over the respect he deserves.

I am thrilled.

[midknightryder13]

I've tried to explain this to some of my white friends and co-workers, but maybe now they will understand a bit better. Because of all the hurdles that a man of color -- ANY man of color must just through/over to get to the same place that a white man can just "walk" to, the only way now President-elect Obama could hope to make this happen was to run a near perfect campaign. Amd BELIEVE ME, he knew that going in. He couldn't be 'as good' as JMcC, he had to be much, much better -- just to be percieved as being 'as good'. This does change some things -- history, for one -- but we're not done yet, alas.
Anyway, I have to wait for the shock to wear off first. The reality will set in for me, maybe Friday.

[LeoMarvin]

"The First President Who is Black"

He's black?

Damn. I wish I knew that before I voted for him.

[TheJourneytoChange]

No! President Elected Barack Obama is mixed. Glad you voted.

[MsDebate]

What I take from this election is how Obama ran his campaign, that is one for the record books. I am sure that people will be changing their strategies to be just like "Obama"

[InTheSouth]

I am absolutely thrilled we have President Obama and I voted for him. But - he is not just black, he is white too and he is most of all a bridge which will help heal a lot of ills this nation has faced and is facing. He is the right man for the job and we are so very fortunate to have such a wonderful statesman at our helm. 2009 will be hard but we will make it.

[rkoenn]

I am a white male 55 years old and I truly rejoiced to see Obama win (and to see no more Bush after so many long years of disaster). I am college educated and was raised and attended primary schools in Florida from 1959 to 1971. It is funny because until recently I didn't think too much about it. When I went from elementary school to junior high in 1965 I was suddenly in school with blacks. I don't remembering thinking twice about it. There was no hatred, they were fellow school mates and some were friends. And that is what I felt about Obama. I, or course, could see he had black skin but that never pushed me one way or the other. Over the years I have always sympathized with blacks and other minorities. My wife works with a black man and he has told her stories of being black and racism, not awful stories but still bad. I voted for Obama mainly because of the things mentioned, intelligence, thoughtfulness, caring, etc. But I am also glad to see a black man as president, it gives me hope. And yet I don't really care about the color of his skin.