The Audacity of Change
reason trumped race in the election of Barack Obama; call it a temporary stay
2008-11-10
By William Jelani Cobb

In the weeks after the passage of the 13th Amendment Frederick Douglass faced a dilemma. Four million free black people were a testament to his efforts and yet he confronted a perplexing question: what becomes of an abolitionist once slavery has ended?

I thought about Douglass as the election returns rolled in on Tuesday. There is no exaggeration in saying that November 4, 2008 was likely the most significant single day in the history of black people in this country since ratification of the amendment ending slavery.

Barack Obama is the most adept politician since Ronald Reagan in his ability to read the public mood. Every politician needs a dramatic foil and throughout the political season Obama took frequent aim at "the cynics." But what we rarely discuss is that the category included as many black people as white ones. I long ago recognized that African Americans take comfort in our jaded belief that we have a precise barometer for racism in this country. On some level we live our lives as a running study on the power of race in American society and we have never had a shortage of depressing data. Had Barack Obama conducted a poll prior to announcing his candidacy it would've shown that not a single one of us thought that whites were prepared to vote in significant – let alone tremendous – numbers for a black presidential candidate. Yet they were. The 96% of the black vote that he won on election day was possible only because, after he won the Iowa caucus, African Americans saw that whites were willing to vote for him.

Obama's election calls into question what African Americans know and think we know about this country. An example: the rule of thumb has always been that tough economic times heighten racial antagonism. During the Great Depression whites banded together under the slogan "No Work for Ni—ers Until Every White Man Has a Job." But rather than sinking his campaign, the financial turbulence that struck late in this election cycle sent Obama's poll numbers skyward. 

Beneath our joy there is a basic disorientation. Since the election, I've consistently told young black people that they now have no excuses for under-achieving and told white people that racism is not yet dead. I know that this is not a contradiction in terms but have yet to gracefully articulate that fact.

Yet, I do know this much. The place we now inhabit is somewhere between black cynicism that racism is permanent and the white exuberance that racism is dead. It is no surprise that Colorado voted for Obama and against Affirmative Action on the same day. In the midst of this national celebration it seems almost profane to remind ourselves that Hurricane Katrina and the vision of African Americans floating down the streets of New Orleans was only three years ago or that African American men still have the shortest life expectancy of racial groups in this society. Obama's election will not automatically change the fact that physicians treat white patients more thoroughly than black ones or that black college graduates earn, on average, about the same amount of money as white high school grads.

It seems risqué to bring up the fact that Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest president of the 20th century, was confined to a wheelchair. Yet 45 years after his death we still needed the Americans with Disabilities Act to combat bias against those with handicaps.

Frederick Douglass dissented from his abolitionist peers in 1865. As they celebrated the end of slavery and talked of disbanding their antislavery organizations he soberly warned against premature Hallelujahs.  He recognized the majesty of the moment he had witnessed but also understood that progress is rarely uniform and often fragile. "Beware," he said, "of the new forms this old snake might take." He proved prescient. The lynching, exploitation and sharecropping of the years after Emancipation proved to be so bitter that African Americans commonly said they were "worse than slavery."

On Tuesday, November 4th we were given a snapshot of the promised land. We are closer to it than we've ever been before.

But we're not there yet.

William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an associate professor of history at Spelman College. His third book, now available from NYU Press: To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic  He can be reached at http://www.jelanicobb.com