Blacks see hope, doubt in an Obama victory
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008
For a people first brought here centuries ago in chains, thrown together by the imprecise lens of skin color and systematically subjugated long after slavery was abolished, the election presents the possibility of a monumental marker, a mountaintop reached.
"It's been a long struggle," said Gracie Nash, 45, who grew up in West Oakland eating the free lunches provided by the Black Panther Party and is now a nurse in her hometown. She beamed as she talked. "It's about keeping the faith."
But the possibility of a black president is happening in a nation where being black is closely linked to lesser schools, low-skilled jobs, poor life expectancy and greater chances of landing in prison. So Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy also prompts apprehension.
"A black president is not magic," said Ebhodaghe Esoimeme, 23, who graduated from Oakland Tech and is currently looking for a job as a Web designer or club promoter. "He's not going to make inequality change overnight, and he's sure not going to change it in four years."
Excitement versus reality
One man moving forward only means so much to the movement of a people.
"There is an uneasy juxtaposition of excitement, presented by Obama, and the realities on the ground of so many black folk catching hell," said Professor Eddie S. Glaude, 40, who grew up as the child of farmers in Mississippi and now holds an endowed chair in religion and African American studies at Princeton University.
The mere possibility of black people being freely able to vote is recent history.
It was only on Aug. 6, 1965 - a century after the abolition of slavery and two days after Obama turned 4 - that the Voting Rights Act was signed. The act outlawed the literacy tests, poll taxes and quizzes - like how many jelly beans fit in a jar - that had been used to prevent black people from voting.
It was only 1980 when former California Gov. Ronald Reagan gave his first speech as the Republican presidential nominee in Philadelphia, Miss., the place where three civil rights workers had been killed as they tried to register black people to vote in the Freedom Summer of 1964. Reagan offended many people when he used the setting to praise the theory of "states' rights," the argument Southern states had used to justify slavery, segregation and discriminatory voting rights.
'Not in my lifetime'
So it is no wonder that many black people these days talk about how they used to think about the idea of a black president: "not in my lifetime." Now, telling a child "you can be anything you want if you work hard enough" seems to be true. For some, the fact that Obama's support has come from people of many colors, particularly white people, has already made them question long-held assumptions about race.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of white people who publicly declare on a daily basis with signs, stickers and buttons that they want a black man to lead them. Many, many people of many races have put signs in their yards, often in neighborhoods where black people were once discouraged from living - including Palo Alto and North Berkeley. Others wear T-shirts emblazoned with his face.
It bewilders Henry Scott.
"They're riding around in cars with a bumper sticker with a black man's name on it," said Scott, 43, a barbershop owner who lives in San Francisco. "It makes me trust people more."
If polls prove correct, more white men will support this black Democrat than will have supported any of the white men who've been the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in three decades - even more than Bill Clinton, whom Nobel laureate Toni Morrison called the "first black president."
Scott was among several people who actually pointed to or touched their skin. He said, "It just feels so good to see this complexion on television running for president."
Mark Lane is 53 years old. He runs Natural Health Center, a store selling vitamins and healthy herbs in North Oakland that his mother started 23 years ago. Being black has meant closed doors and explicit slights. But the reality that a black man has a viable candidacy for president has changed Lane's very conception of what it means to be an American.
'Outside looking in'
"For so long, African Americans, we haven't felt like we were part of this country," he said. "We were on the outside looking in."
Lane and others said they realized that Obama, if elected, would be under a microscope, just as he's been during the election. A black president's every gesture or policy would be scrutinized for racial undertones. They know that a black president will be working within a power structure dominated by white people, including the overwhelmingly white White House press corps.
And views on the street might not change at all.
"I don't think a black man as president is going to change a damn thing as far as changing the views of those who don't like that he's black - and now he has power," said Greg Gregory, 32, of Antioch.
The real estate and insurance broker talks to people all over the country for his job. Many people, particularly in Middle America, use epithets and disparage black people without realizing who they're talking to.
"Ultimately, their views are not going to change in a day because they were not made in a day."
sfgate.com |
