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Barack Obama and how we look at race
By Hastings Wyman
Southern Political Report
January 21, 2009 —
The moment Barack Obama took the oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States he made a monumental change in this nation, beginning a major transformation of the way Americans look at race. The United States has lived with a painful gap between its idealism and its performance. A legacy of slavery, segregation and myriad lesser examples of racism have reminded African-Americans on an almost daily basis that all Americans are created equal, but some are less equal than others. By electing Obama as its first black president, Americans have signaled they no longer want to live with that gap. But voters don’t deserve all the credit. Obama, with his intellect, his deft appreciation of Americans of all political stripes, his self-confidence in the face of frightening problems -- not “challenges,” folks, problems -- his warmth and his cool, has made it easy for Americans to let their better selves rise to the fore. Much of Obama’s accomplishment in winning the presidency, including carrying Florida, North Carolina and Virginia -- the first time the Democrats cracked the South without a white Southerner at the top of the ticket -- can be traced to his personal qualities. It’s not just that he’s bright and persuasive, but he is inclusive. When a reporter confronted him with research that showed his mother -- and thus Obama himself -- was a descendent of slaveholders, his response was “We are a typical American family.” That kind of willingness to accept the mosaic of our history, even while exhibiting a determination to correct wrongs that still exist, is rare among politicians, black or white. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, both at first unwelcoming of Obama’s candidacy, certainly had some legitimate complaints, but you can’t win votes by telling people how bad they are, especially when people know they’ve been bad What Obama accomplished as winning candidate and as president-elect is just the beginning. The office of president is more than a wielder of great power; it is also, by virtue of its intense media-driven visibility, an institution that can daily signal that the highest office in the world’s most powerful nation is held by a black man. His efforts to solve the financial crisis -- already inspiring 83% of the public to approve of his performance as president-elect -- and his other official acts will dominate the news. And so will all sorts of details of the First Family’s life: Michelle Obama’s clothes, his daughters’ dog, the pride he has instilled in his African relatives, and so on. These messages can more than compete with those less welcome messages the local television news brings us all too often, messages of crime and poverty in the nation’s mostly black ghettos. Moreover, by surrounding himself with accomplished African Americans, without calling attention to their race, but merely hiring the best, Obama is destroying a widely held myth that blacks are not on a par with whites. Indeed, Obama has already shown, in speeches, debates, fundraising and political strategy, that he is brighter, more skilled and more sure-footed than his -- white -- political foes. So instead of viewing the nation’s black population as this large minority of underachievers and troublemakers, topped by a thin layer of exceptions, white Americans are beginning to see black Americans in a more realistic light, as a people -- freed from most of the race-related restrictions of the past -- who are on the way up, with a large and growing middle and upper-middle class with first-class educations who are making major contributions to this country. (This has begun to dawn on American business. One night recently I observed the advertisements on a major television network; almost every single one included at least one African-American.) The power of the White House to change public perception of a minority has been demonstrated before. Prior to 1960, it was conventional wisdom that a Roman Catholic could not be elected president. The Democrats did nominate Catholic Al Smith in 1928, but that campaign was distinguished by a photograph of New York Governor Smith standing before the entrance to the newly dug Holland Tunnel; the caption read that the this was the tunnel to the Vatican that the Pope would use to control Smith were he to become president. Smith got 87 electoral votes to Herbert Hoover’s 444, including those of four former Confederate States (NC, TN, TX & VA) who voted with the dreaded Republicans rather than support a Catholic. But in 1960, John F. Kennedy, handsome, rich and married to a beautiful socially prominent wife, won the White House. The country, including the South, has never looked back. Since then, Roman Catholics in high office in Dixie have become commonplace -- as governors or US Senators in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Virginia. Several years ago, in one Georgia congressional district that is about 90% to 95% Protestant, a Jewish candidate won the Democratic Primary, a Catholic the Republican Primary. Southern voters aren’t less religious, they’re just more tolerant. Race is tougher than religion, but the racial polarization that has characterized Southern politics and society in the decades since passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 has already begun to wane -- last fall Obama out-polled John Kerry in nine of the South’s 13 states. Some of this was due to higher black turnout, but some of it was an increase in whites voting Democratic with Obama at the top of the ticket. The Obamas in the White House are likely to give the remaining racism a serious body blow.
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