Hope for a new chance at greatness

MeteorBlades linked to a blog post called Pride and Palpitations this afternoon, and it got me thinking bigtime.  That post talked about the fear many African Americans feel at the prospect of a prominent and even successful black candidate for high office.

I am a gay white male who has strong progressive leanings (RFK and MLK inform a LOT of my political views), and I try to make a point of not just knowing what's going on now, but of knowing what happened in the past and understanding how it affects what is going on now.

My boyfriend and I have had a number of conversations on this subject.  He doesn't seem to have any understanding of what it means to look back at all of your heroes and note that damned near every one of them was assassinated (Gandhi, JFK, RFK, MLK, etc.).

I look back on the people who inspired me, even though I'm not old enough to have experienced them directly, and I can't imagine what it must feel like for those who actually did - people like Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) who marched with MLK at Selma and who's campaign web site I recently designed.  They must surely be thinking, "God damn it!  Every time we start to make a difference, someone rips the rug out from under us!"  You really start to get a sense of the collective rage that must have been felt and that led to the riots following MLK's assassination.

When you combine that with the myriad other  injustices that plague our country's minorities, you can hardly expect there not to be a tremendous amount of bitter resentment, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that it infects our inner cities as it does.  How many times can a people be demoralized, disrespected, beaten down, and shot at before a significant number of them become permanently embittered?  It has become so entrenched in our national culture that people have chosen to not even try anymore.

When Obama gave his '04 convention speech, I was watching it at a restaurant in Norfolk, VA, sharing a table with Chap Petersen (good-old-boy candidate for Lt. Gov.) and a well-known local black female politician.  I turned to her and said "I guarantee you he will be the first black president."  I mean, how could you not, with a speech like that - I was practically moved to tears.  No one had given a speech like that since RFK in 1966 in South Africa or MLK the week before he was shot.

Her response, however, shocked and saddened me.  She said, "I hope he doesn't run."  I asked why and she said, "They're going to kill him too."

I worry about that, sure, but I also think we might be seeing something unique here.  For the first time in my life, we've got a black candidate who is completely and totally transcending racial boundaries.  He may well be the only black man in America who can do that, both because of his ethnic background and upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, and because of his experience as a gifted community organizer.

Everyone who hears him at least respects him.  He's completely non-confrontational, and even the most cynical people hear him and say, "He could make a difference; he could be the one."

Even Rush Limbaugh sang his praises in '04.  He blew away his white Democratic primary opponents all over the state of Illinois, even in the solidly conservative downstate counties.  He's the first black candidate ever to win the collar counties around Chicago in a primary.

My boyfriend lives in Baltimore and we've talked a LOT about the problems of the inner city here.  He's a solid Democrat for the most part, but he just doesn't seem to fully understand what is unique about American history that has contributed to some of the violence and the economic we see now in the cities.  He has also, sadly, fallen for many of the right-wing talking points re: welfare (anyone know of any good sources of info for debunking that crap?).  I've spent a lot of time trying to show him the connections between America's not so distant history (though nearly all of it before he arrived in the US in 1975), but it doesn't seem to click for him.  He asks, "Why doesn't Europe have these problems?"  First off, they have a very different history from us in terms of racial issues, and second, they are indeed starting to have the same problems (riots in Paris, anyone?).

Interestingly, however, he generally leans Obama (though he's not as gung-ho about him as I am.  I believe Obama is unique because of his experience as a community organizer.  I believe that is precisely what we need to fix the problems that so frustrate my boyfriend.  He's taking a non-confrontation approach to organizing, telling people if we're going to change anything, we're going to have to figure out how to work past our differences to build a working majority in this country.  If we're too busy fighting each other (as is so common in urban politics), we're never going to see any of the change that we so desperately want in the world.

He's not saying, "Let's rise up and take our spot at the table," it seems to me, he's saying "Let's all work together and build a bigger table."  I think that might have something to do with why he is being successful where others weren't.  He very much embodies the hope that we are better than our past, that we can rise above the fear and reactionary attitudes of our ancestors.  I think he can break through a lot of the attitudes that people like my boyfriend have developed and help move us a long way towards fixing what is broken in our society.

Maybe I'm talking out of my ass here, but he just feels DIFFERENT on so many levels.  I really think that could save him from the fate of some prominent black leaders before him and I think it could propel us to real change for the first time in my lifetime.

I still pray to whatever gods there might be that he's got the best security team in the history of presidential politics, though. ;-)