Last week, Will Smith was on Oprah and he declared, “Human kind has changed forever, the shift has occured.” I don’t think I have to tell you what he was referring to, of course, he was talking about Barack Obama being elected the first black president of the United States.
But has a shift occurred? Yes, it is a testament to the many Americans who voted for Obama, that they were able to see beyond color. But, suddenly, everyone has forgotten that there are still millions who didn’t vote for him and many of them did so because he is black. The media has painted this picture of a perfect union, declaring that we have finally achieved the goals of our forefathers. But have we?
Even in the context of this triumph, what I have heard people say privately over the course of this election was shocking. I wear my politics on my sleeve (literally) which invites debate and comments, even when I don’t want them. In response to my Obama tees and Obama stickers, racist rhetoric has been spewed at me. Maybe it wasn’t all blatant, maybe some were just questioning Obama’s “patriotism” or worrying about “rioting” if he didn’t win. But some of it was astonishingly blatant, offensive, and crude. Over the past 21 months, I’ve heard it all, it makes me question the company I keep but I think we are all keeping that company, leading me to believe there is still a long way to go.
And this doesn’t even touch on those who voted for Obama thinking he will actually do more for “white people”. I heard this on NPR yesterday, “and what about reaction to Obama’s win by people who are racist? Weary, a Republican who voted for Obama, says that after the election, he went online to look at the hate Web sites, and he was surprised at what he found. “Interestingly enough, I found a lot of sentiment on there from these white supremacists actually backing Obama,” Weary says. “Crazy, right? Their viewpoint is that a black president is going to have to do more for white people, or for ‘white agendas,’ because he’s going to have to prove that he’s not just there for black people.”
It is wonderful that our next president will be a young black man but we can’t get too complacent, we still have to be aware that this doesn’t erase years of hate and prejudice. That it still looms close to the surface, that we still have work to do in order to truly achieve that perfect union.
