Obama and “postracial” America

Support for Obama has been so strong in New York City that both campaigns hardly bothered to run commercials here, and not many residents bothered to wear pins or put out yard signs. But when the election was called for Obama at around eleven last night, my neighbors in Fort Greene spilled out into the streets, hooting and yelling and grinning at strangers. White and black folks milled around, blocking traffic, and crammed into cafes and bars to hear Obama’s acceptance speech. It was a thrilling night.

An Obama presidency will be good in a variety of ways, starting with (to look at my own priorities) the war, the environment, human rights, and the economy. But does it mean that this is now a “postracial” society, as some of the pundits have been saying? Have we solved our racial problems overnight by putting a black man in the White House? Not so fast.

When Jenn and I had our bookstore cafe in Fort Greene, there were recurring debates (not only among black customers) about the racial state of America. Some claimed racism was a thing of the past. Others said America was still racist to the core, as bad as it had ever been. The truth, I think, is closer to what’s summed up in the title of the book Long Way to Go. The country has come a long way, but it’s still got a long way to go.

That said, Obama’s election was a watershed moment in race relations. You could see it on Jesse Jackson’s face last night. It wasn’t just that he was weeping: it was that he looked totally stunned, as if his brain couldn’t process what his eyes were seeing. A milestone had been reached, and it had been done with methods very different from those that Jackson had used as an activist and a presidential candidate. Those methods were needed: entrenched political power does not yield without a confrontation. But to take things to the next level required a different approach.

Obama’s strategy, which seems to grow naturally out of his own personality, was to appeal to the better angels of our nature. He knew that as individuals and as a country we have not lived up to our ideals, but he trusted that many of us would like to. Obama’s early victory in the Iowa primary was a sign that something unusual was going on. A very white state had voted for a black man, and not because they had been made to feel they were racists if they didn’t. They did it because Obama seemed to offer acceptance and a better way, rather than rubbing their faces in the sins of the past (and the not so past).

African American parents, some of the pundits are saying, can now tell the truth when they tell their children, “You too can grow up to be president.” But if they are wise, they won’t hide the fact that it will be tougher than it would be for a white person with similar qualifications — just as it is for people of color in every aspect of life.

It doesn’t help you to succeed in business when the “self-made” millionaire tells you you can be like him if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it doesn’t help you to overcome the racial barriers in American society to be told that this is a postracial America, that those barriers are all in your mind, and that if Barack Obama can do it you can too. Having Obama in the White House will help create opportunities and heal racial wounds, but putting him there is the beginning, not the end.