Okay so now that we have had a few days to digest the history of this moment and we have all wept (I did so yet again this afternoon when I watched President Elect Obama give his first economic Press Conference), celebrated, and smiled like there was no tomorrow, its’ time to have a little straight talk.
First, we all were WRONG about “RACE” in this campaign. Whatever Bradley effect there was in this campaign it was offset by legions of Americans (white and black, native American, and Hispanic) voting for Mr. Obama in record numbers on Tuesday. In point of fact, Senator Obama did better with white voters than did both John Kerry and Al Gore. He did better with young voters, women voters, older voters, middle class voters, and well educated voters.
The only group that he did not win was those white voters who made under $50,000 a year and who make up the majority of the GOP’s Conservative base (what’s left of it) that forms a bizzare T shape across the electoral map.
I just want to say that America and Americans have come a long way. I still think I am in shock. This past week before the election I took a couple of evenings between media travel and watched John Adams, Roots, North & South, Rosewood, Sally Hemmings: An American Scandal, and Mr. & Mrs. Loving.
This past summer my family went to South Carolina, and we stayed on the Isle of Palms in Charleston ( as we do each summer). Very close to Charleston is Boone Hall Plantation. It is the oldest working plantation still in existence in the U.S. It dates back to the 1600s. It was also the set used for Queen, North & South, and several other mini-series about slavery and the Civil War.
If you have never toured an American Plantation, you should. Boone Hall is simply breathtaking. To see the slave quarters and the BIG House in real time is stirring and hurtful all at once. To close your eyes and wonder what kind of terror it must have been for these Africans so far away from home, enslaved, and brutalized for hundreds of years–it is powerful indeed.
I often remind myself of our journey as Americans; and most importantly of the fact that our journey as black people only really came to some sense of closure in the mid 1960s with the passage of both the Voting Rights & Civil Rights Acts of 1964 & 1965. I thought about my own American family’s journey and how proud my grand, great and great great grandparents would be to have lived to see this day. I have only one grandparent still alive–my maternal grandmother who will be 80 next year.
She was raised in Oklahoma, her mother (Purnie) was the daughter of a slave and a slave owner. She did not think she would live to see America fulfill the dream or its promise in her lifetime. But she has lived to see that day and so have all of us.
I just wanted to go on the record and say that I am proud of this country. I feel so proud as an American. We triumphed over fear and gave into hope for something better. Be clear that President Elect Obama is just a man folks. He will disappoint us all at some point. He is human. We need to accept that and simply adjust and forgive and do our part to help him be a good President. We have difficult days ahead–the economy is in distress–jobs are being lost at record pace. Trust me, I know as do many of you.
But we have hope for a new direction and for new bi-partisanship. Hope springs eternal–only time will tell. But for now–we should all be proud of how our nation came together and put race aside. It is something I will never forget.
I will be doing a lot more writing on this topic and we will be having some wonderful guest posts in the next few weeks as we continue to discuss the transformation that we all hope America will experience over these next four years.
For now, from my favorite Cheryl Lynn song, [America] “you deserve and encore”.
God bless & Keep Moving Forward!
Sophia