After writing the title of this post, I had a freaky flashback to an embarrassing elementary school moment, when my 5th grade music teacher made us sing "Both Sides, Now" - by heart - at a school assembly. We had no idea what the lyrics meant. It seemed very hippy dippy. And our performance was sappy like a maple tree in April. I admire and respect Ms. Mitchell greatly, but I have only bad feelings about this song. It's about clouds, and love, and ice cream castles... Let me take a moment to find the song: here it is. Careful. It's going to lodge in your brain, and you just may spend the rest of the day regretting having listened to it.
Anyway, I'm trying to get to a real point, which is all about our President, Barack Obama. And I will get to other points about him in future posts, but today's point is this:
I am proud to have voted in a president who is thoughtful, intelligent, and open-minded. I don't always support his decisions or actions. But I believe that he consults his Cabinet, weighs opposing arguments, and has a gift for deriving reasonable compromise, in areas where most of us can not see past our own strongly held opinions. How would you get us out of Iraq? Rectify Guantanamo? Reverse the deficit? Undo the damage of No Child Left Behind? Fight terrorism?
Obama's ability to compromise, to generously consider both sides of an argument, is so f*cking important! And I for one attribute this ability to his being biracial.
I wrote a piece about this theory of mine, on the morning of his election. Our local monthly magazine published it, as follows in its entirety. I haven't made any changes. It already has a time capsule quality, ripe with optimism, only three years gone. Like to read it? Here ya go:
++++
Barack Obama is the President Elect of the United States of America. An African American. A man of mixed heritage – black father, white mother, like me. A man whose parents’ marriage was not recognized by Virginia state law at the time of his birth, he won the electoral and popular votes in that same state last night. The achievements of his campaign have taught us so much about ourselves. Our new public image, of our country as a whole, will serve to empower nations of people, and speaks volumes about the state of the American dream. Because he won, our children are living in a new world.
This crying jag started at 11 o’clock last night, after the girlies were finally asleep. We had reveled long past bedtime, at a neighborhood gathering where young children watched animated blockbusters on one screen, and adults sat glued to the rolling returns on another, surfing the cable and network news stations, accepting the early projections with cautious optimism; the children periodically asking, “Did he win yet?” with excitement fueled by a sugary buffet, as much as by the auspicious indicators on screen.
At about 10 o’clock, Pennsylvania and Ohio turned blue on the big maps. I deflected the glassy-eyed exchanges of friends and neighbors. The pundits declared that McCain would need a mathematical miracle to win, but I was not about to believe it was a done deal, not after what happened the last time. It was too early to celebrate.
At 10:45, we dragged our pajama-clad babes up to their beds, while visions of Victory Cupcakes danced in their heads. Their little brown bodies fell limp, free of tension, anxiety, and the anticipation of a New Day.
At 11 o’clock, I sat in the big chair across from our living room TV, watching, while Husby disappeared behind the internet. Then a voter alert flashed: Obama is the projected winner of the presidential election. Could it be? I scrolled madly through reporting channels, MSNBC, CNN, even Fox, and found them all in agreement. McCain was about to deliver his concession speech. IT WAS REAL. Jesse Jackson’s tear-streaked face, “(his) heart overflowing with joy and hope”, conveyed the immense swell of emotions so many of us shared. Remembrances of the countless martyrs, and survivors, who had brought us to this place. The generations of black Americans who were now witness to the unthinkable, in the best possible light: A black family is headed to the White House.
While some folks feel that Obama isn’t black enough, it seems to me that he’s precisely black enough. The diplomatic practice of living biracial in America is great leadership training. Owning family on both sides of a nation’s internal battles, life itself embodies a volatile junction. Commanding the tenacity and self-reliance to sustain a successful career in public service on these terms, Barack Obama is uniquely qualified to run our complex polyglot nation with compassion, empathy, and calm. He has spent a lifetime collaborating across the aisle.
My five year old knows that we supported the Obama campaign. We explained to her that he was the smarter of the candidates, that he had the best ideas for fixing the problems in our country. The topic of race never entered our little chats, until this morning, on the drive to school: I pointed out to her that our new president is African-American, and that I am, and that she is too. And suddenly we were thrown into a dialogue about racial identity, somewhat reminiscent of conversations I had with my own parents, but in the context of a completely unfamiliar reality. I’ve spent thirty-plus years responding to society’s demands that I define my ethnicity, decode my own racial identity, decide which race labels of the day best suit my mixed-race status. My children are so young, they don’t know that people judge, and are judged, according to skin color. They see that people look different, and they really don’t care.
This election presents the possibility that we, as a people, are capable of seeing with those eyes, and acting with that mindset. I want to believe that we, as individuals, are free to define ourselves through our actions, our words, and our combined efforts, exempt from prejudice. Any parent would want that for their children. Today, it feels very possible.
Nov. 5, 2008
3 comments:
The world is a better place with your deep, soft voice being broadcast! I can't wait till the next post!
Dear BG -
I've been lurking in the background, reading your wonderful posts over these early weeks of your blog. I just want you to know I think you're such a brilliant and sensitive writer -- you are able to encapsulate so profoundly, and so vividly, your feelings, on the cusp (for you are always on the cusp, which is where the tension is, which is where the change is, which is where the action is) of everything that makes this race -- Americans, humans -- so maddening and yet so excitingly rich in its possibilities.
And I totally agree with you about the Prez. He, too, of course, is a pioneer on the cusp, defining the cusp, moving it forward. He too holds all the tension of the opposing forces that both move this country forward and try to hold it back. And he does it with a courage, a dignity, a burning intelligence, and a sense of possibility and respect for others that I find almost unfathomable. How does he do it? How does he hold to his principles when something about him -- partially his "brown-ness," as you might call it -- pushes so many people's buttons, somehow draws to the skin of the body politic so many toxins, so much absurd hate?
He was not born to wealth, to privilege, to a famous family. He is, as he put it, a mutt. His single mother lived hand to mouth, his father unknown to him. Like Bill Clinton before him, he has SO MUCH more in common with the very people who loathe him than do the snarky haters on the right, the people who drink the Kool-Aid of hate radio, who wave the flag of resentment.
There is so much ugliness in this country, interlaced with so much greatness. Nobody embodies that -- forces us by his very existence to confront that -- more than Obama.
He embodies the adage: no good deed goes unpunished.
He is the president of the future, the multiracial, open-minded, meritocratic, intelligent future... while half of this country apparently refuses to live past the 1950s.
I don't know how he does it. This man has greatness, as few (if any) previous presidents have. And one day he will be know for it.
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