My friend George schools me on Obama and the race question
Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 01:36:57 PM PDT
I wish there was a way that everybody here could spend a few minutes with my friend George. George is an African-American male in his mid-70's who speaks with a booming voice and palpable moral authority. George was raised in the deep south, as such - he was raised in the shadow of Jim Crow. He was among the first soldiers to serve in an integrated military. He was among the many who marched with King in Selma. He eventually helped to blaze a trail as one of the first African American news correspondents for major media outlet. The man has paid his dues.
The two of us got to speaking the other day about the upcoming primary election. "I think Edwards is our only hope" he said.
I was shocked.
"What about Obama" I asked? "You don't like him?"
"Of course I do," said George. "But America will never accept a black president" he said.
More after the flip...
To be honest with you, the whole thing threw me for a loop. I had never seen George as a fatalist. The two of us met in our work as activists. George was always our rock. The last guy to admit defeat in any circumstance. But here he was giving up before a fight. It made no sense to me.
I made a half-hearted attempt to lecture George about the self-defeating nature of fatalism, but I knew I had no moral standing to lecture a man of his stature. There was nothing I could tell George that he hadn't lived for years. So instead, I let him break it down for me. What he told me broke my heart.
It is easy for someone who has suffered little to believe in the basic decency of others. George saw men lynched and nothing done about it. He lived through a time in which King, Evers and Malcolm X were all felled by assassins bullets. Emmitt Till's murderers walked free for decades after his death. He watched as Barry Goldwater exploited hatred to sew the seeds of a solid Republican south. He saw Nixon harvest those seeds. He saw Reagan vilify "welfare queens," Bush senior exploit the image of Willie Horton. He saw Thurgood Marshall replaced with Clarence Thomas, and saw Colin Powell used to sell an illegal war.
"Do you distrust Obama?" I asked.
"No" said George, "I distrust America".
In the days since I've thought a lot about what he said. I think about my days living in Los Angeles when the Rodney King incident happened. There it was - a beating on film. Still there was no justice.
Talking to the African American people I knew then, they would tell me that the reason for all of the rioting was that black people simply did not have any faith in the system any more. Later, when OJ Simpson was on trial, I was a member of the jury pool. I recall more than a few people I talked to (even a potential juror) explaining to me that it did not matter if Simpson was guilty or not. There were two different standards of justice for the white and the black. This time a black man was going to come out ahead.
Even in the world of gangsta rap and 'thug culture' - the underlying theme is that you cannot win playing the white man's game. Best to reject his education and his values and live by your own rules.
While I do not generalize this kind of thinking to all African Americans, one would have to be blind to deny that a very real segment of the black community simply rejects our entire system.
Into all of this walks Barack Obama - the first African American candidate ever regarded as a serious contender to really become President. Just by being who he is, he has the potential to be a catalyst for good - to give the people I've described above a reason to consider believing again. And then there is the matter of all of the things he stands for. Transparency in government. A just foreign policy. A committment to the dignity of each individual. A good faith effort to turn away from the days of seeing one's own neighbor as the 'enemy.' The Democratic party as a truly big tent party. If elected, Barack Obama would be the most reliably liberal man to hold the white house in decades.
I asked George what he thought about Obama on a policy level. He spoke effusively. I could see the light coming up in George' eyes as he let himself believe that a black man...this black man might actually be elected President. Then he added something I've seen a few people here say, "but even if he does get elected - they will probably kill him."
Whether George is right or not is beside the point. I won't blame a man who has seen what he has for believing the worst. But it occurs to me that we in the progressive movement have failed to honor the significance of the Obama candidacy. When we talk about it in terms of race, we speak only in terms of electability. We speak of it like George - only in the negative. What we never seem to do is to account for its potential to heal. Not "heal" in the abstract psychobabble sense of the word - but to really make a statement about our system. To begin the process of showing men like George that a day is coming in which they will get a fair shake.
In the long history of our country, our treatment of the black man stands as the bleeding hole in our side. It caused the framers to degrade their reputations when they settled for 3/5th's compromise, and it was at the heart of our greatest trial during the civil war. Even the atrocities of the Bush administration are a direct result of it, as it was the southern republican coalition that made Bush possible.
We talk a lot here about not settling for half a loaf. Supporters of John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich in particular will argue that America is ready for a wholesale transformation right now. They will argue that anything less than that is a form of capitulation. But aren't the policy differences between those men and Obama relatively miniscule when compared to the prospect of transforming America's entire paradigm regarding race?
Please understand. I am not suggesting that anybody owes Barack Obama a single vote by virtue of the color of his skin. But as progressives we do owe him something. We owe him real consideration. We owe him our good will. When I read comments in diaries blithely dismissing him as "naive" or an "empty suit" - I ask myself what we would say about a company that wrote off black applicants as casually.
There are days around here in which I would be ashamed to show George the things that have been written about Barack Obama by those of us in the progressive community. I imagine he'd read much of it and conclude that he is right to have so little faith in America - for if he cannot find a reason for optimism here, where will he find it?
George concluded the night telling me that he wants badly to believe. He is looking to people like us to prove to him that we are serious about equality. Will we do him the honor of giving this camapaign our real consideration? Or will we prove his worst fears correct?
