(In general I am not a fan of posts that come with music, but in this case I think it applies well enough to make an exception.)
There is a very good chance that in less than a week the United States of America will elect a black man as President. Nobody knows what that might mean because it’s a unique event in our history. It is, in a way, a little scary; the same way that anything unknown, even something I badly want to happen, is a little scary. The important question is: how will people react?
There is an intractable problem whenever one tries to discuss race in this country. Racism is considered an absolute taboo, as it should be. But everybody, black or white, brown or yellow, old or young, male or female, is at least a little bit racist. It is impossible to see someone without noticing the color of their skin and that alone leads to all kinds of other little judgments, some of which are, inevitably, racial or cultural. Those judgments may be instantaneous and involuntary but they exist and so all of us are at least a little bit guilty of judging others by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character.
That is the uncrackable nut of the problem. Every individual has their own unique experience of race in America and it always falls short of the colorblind ideal. We invent stereotypes as a necessary if distasteful shorthand, but they inevitably paint people inaccurately. All we know for sure is that things are better today than they were twenty years ago, and they were better then that they were twenty years before that, and so on back until at least Reconstruction. That experience tells us that twenty years from now things will (hopefully) be better than they are today, and twenty years after that they’ll (hopefully) be even better until at some point racism becomes truly inconsequential.
Of course many people are more than just a little bit racist, and the proof is in the fact that the Secret Service felt it prudent to begin protecting Barack Obama in the spring of 2007. (Since that time there have been at least two groups of people arrested on suspicion of plotting against him.) Nevertheless, here we are less than a week from Election Day and the black candidate is significantly ahead in pretty much every metric we have, including actual votes. Thoughts then turn to questions like “Yes but what does it mean?” and “Okay, but what are the practical, day-to-day implications?”
Those questions are probably unanswerable, at least for a while; all we know for sure is that it’s big. It might be big in that it fundamentally changes the way a lot of Americans see each other. Hopefully Barack Obama will be a successful president, but even if he is merely a middling one the dire fears coming from the right these days won’t come true. Will that fundamentally alter inherent racial assumptions? There are a lot of white people in this country who live in overwhelmingly white areas and can easily go for long stretches between minority sightings, what impact will this have on them?
It’s also possible that electing a black president is big simply as a marker for the continuing evolution of our society from one where laws separated people at birth to one where someone’s racial background is an afterthought (or no thought at all). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are now older than most Americans; as people who grew up after the struggle to get those laws passed come into power will having a minority president be seen as something that was just bound to happen sooner or later? The number of First Black Xs (astronaut, Supreme Court Justice, Super Bowl winning coach) is ever decreasing, is it possible this is just one more in course?
My own guess is that it will be hailed as historic immediately, but that we won’t get a good feel for how it really matters for a year or two. One of the more entertaining aspects of this general election campaign has been watching the anti-Obama sentiments border on, and then sometimes cross over into, outright racism. How will those people react to the daily reality of President Obama? After all, the American President is probably the most famous and televised person on Earth; having an image of (non-athletic) black success be inescapable for four (eight!) years may be a more powerful thing than we can imagine.
Take, for example, this wonderfully American exchange reported to FiveThirtyEight.com two weeks ago:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
(Incidentally, it is okay to use the word “nigger” when you’re quoting like that. Inserting a few asterisks is juvenile self indemnification and only serves to make the word itself more powerful, not less.)
That story sounds almost too good to be true, but for someone like me who has spent a lot of time in the Red parts of Blue states that story has the real ring of truth. (They convincingly stood by it in a later post.) When it’s just us white people around it is easy to encounter “I’m sorry and I know I shouldn’t feel this way but . . .” feelings. Of course, when push comes to shove it doesn’t apply to the black guy you go fishing with, or the guy you hang out with in the break room at work. It’s always some other black people.
That is the best description I can give for racism in America. There are certainly the out and out nazi shitheads, but they’re a fringe unworthy of serious attention. Most people, though, will give anyone a chance regardless of creed or color. It is those ordinary Americans, who are often a little bit more racist than they’d like to be, who, I think, will benefit from having Barack Obama in their lives. I include myself in that category and I think in their honest moments a lot of other people, pink and brown, black and white, yellow and red, would as well. The image below says it all (via Politico):
Only in America
End Note: It is possible that Obama’s race will cost him this election. You can go back and forth about The Bradley Effect versus The Cellphone Effect versus The “Your Likely Voter Model Sucks” Effect until you’re blue in the face, but we won’t know for sure until next week. I find those sorts of things interesting to read but ultimately frivolous. This particular set of circumstances is unique, and not just because there’s a black candidate. There is a president with historically low approval ratings, there is an ongoing financial panic, there are two wars being waged, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Remember, N Always = 1.
I’m an American who was raised in America and lives in America and based on my American experience I don’t think this country is still racist enough to deny the presidency to Obama on account of his melanin content. I could be wrong about that, and there’s certainly nothing about my experience that makes it a better or worse predictor of the nation as a whole than anyone else’s, but when the available data is shaky at best you’ve got to go with your instincts. Mine say that it’ll cost him some votes but it’ll add some too and in the end he’s still very likely to win.
