This essay on Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election first appeared on the blog at my website, www.charlessaunderswriter.com. I decided to share it with BSFS as well.He did it. He really, really did it. Barack Obama’s victory was not “taken away” at the last minute, as so many of his supporters (myself among them) feared. I have to tell you, though, that as I watched the first returns coming in, with John McCain leading in so many of the states whose polls closed at 6 p.m., I was feeling kind of queasy. I was thinking that I was seeing the “Bradley effect” – in which a black candidate leads in the public-opinion polls but loses in the polling booth – in action.Only when Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio did I realize that he had put an end to the “Bradley effect.” He was actually going to win! It was just a matter of whether or not he could win in some of the states that were traditional Republican “red states,” especially in the South. I remembered that during the Democratic primaries, Obama won the states in which Republicans usually win in November, while Hillary Clinton won the states that Democrats usually win in November. I was concerned that this would spell trouble for Obama in November, even as he took the nomination away from Clinton – which, in itself, was hardly a small accomplishment, and would ensure that Obama would be more than just a footnote in history even if he lost in November.The question was: could those angry Hillary supporters bring themselves to vote for the man who took the nomination away from her? The polls right after Obama sewed up the nomination didn’t look at all promising. A lot of Hillary supporters were saying they would either vote for McCain or stay home. That reminded me of members of those religious orders in which people whip themselves, or that guy in The Da Vinci Code who wrapped barbed wire around his leg.Happily, that didn’t happen. I think that McCain’s nomination Sarah Palin as his running mate made a lot of those Hillary supporters step back and say, “What is this? Their answer to Hillary? Thanks, but no thanks.” And then, of course, the Wall Street meltdown came, and the Democrats realized that this was one time they had better not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.I stayed up to watch the confirmation of Obama’s victory, as well as McCain’s concession speech and Obama’s victory speech. I was impressed by the graciousness of McCain’s speech. It was as though he was allowing his true self to show – the self that he allowed his advisers to obscure during the campaign. I wish Al Gore would have won the 2000 election, but if he had to lose, I would rather it had been to the McCain of that time. Not the McCain of the third presidential debate – the one who referred to Obama as “that one.” Anyway, McCain showed a lot of class.So did George Bush, during the speech he made the day after the election. Considering that both candidates were essentially running against his record, Bush was as courteous as he could be under those circumstances.Obama could not have made a better victory speech. He showed why people should support him, even if some of them couldn’t vote for him. His smile reminds me of Nelson Mandela’s – it lights up the room. His voice and speaking style remind me of Martin Luther King Jr.’s – inspirational. Imagine a CD that consisted of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, followed by Obama’s victory speech. Who could listen to that without being moved? Well, I can think of some people, but I’m trying to be positive here.I’m sure you’ve heard it said again and again, by black people and white people and other people, that they “never imagined that a black person would be elected President of the United States during their lifetime.” Maybe you’ve said it yourself. I know I have. But I don’t think anybody imagined that a game-changer like Obama would have appeared on the scene – someone who added an unprecedented element to the racial scene.How, you ask, is Obama a game-changer? It’s because he’s an African-American who does not carry “The Legacy” with him. I’m talking about the legacy of slavery, which has been a long-term poison in American society. That poison affects blacks and whites alike. I will not call it “baggage,” because that’s an insulting reference. The legacy is at the root of the lingering racism in the United States.Obama is an African-American. But the African part of his heritage is not connected to someone who came to America on a slave ship 200, 300 or 400 years ago. His father was a Kenyan who came to America on a scholarship, not a slave ship. And his mother was a white woman whose parents did not disown her for marrying a black man, as was often the case back when Obama was born.So, this whole sad stew of resentment over who is the grandchild of a slave and who is the grandchild of a slave-owner and who should be exempt from that whole debate because their ancestors had “nothing to do with it” does not apply to Obama. For me, he represents what black Americans could have become a lot sooner if their ancestors had come to the United States as free people, not property.Yet the progress those of us who carry “The Legacy” have made is far from inconsiderable, and it tends to get overlooked because of the unfinished business that “The Legacy” brings with it. I believe that many of the whites who enthusiastically supported Obama were able to do so because when they looked at him and his background, “The Legacy” was not there, and they had no reason to believe he thought he was owed a debt of guilt because of what happened to his ancestors.Ironically, Obama’s lack of “The Legacy” caused a lot of black Americans who do have “The Legacy” to look at him with suspicion. This whole “He’s not black enough” thing was code for “his blues ain’t like mine.” All these people who say that blacks’ 95 per cent vote for Obama is proof of their “racism” conveniently forget that at the start of the campaign two years ago, Hillary Clinton had 70 per cent of black Democrats’ support, and she had the support of most of the Congressional Black Caucus. He had to prove himself to the people who carry “The Legacy,” just as he did with everyone else. He identified himself with people of “The Legacy,” because he sympathized with what was going on in their heads, even though it wasn’t going on in his.Another way that Obama is a “game-changer” is that he’s a one-man “melting pot.” You know how the United States is always saying it’s a “melting pot,” assimilating ethnic minorities into “one nation, indivisible.” Of course, groups such as African Americans and Native Americans wonder why they haven’t “melted” yet. But look at Obama. His father was from Kenya, a part of Africa from which few, if any, slaves were sent to America. His mother was white and from Kansas, and was rooted enough in U.S. history to be able to claim distant kinship with Dick Cheney, of all people. I almost died laughing when Obama cracked a joke about the “black sheep” in the family – meaning Cheney.After divorcing Obama’s father, she married an Indonesian, with whom she had a daughter. So, Obama has a sister who is half-white and half-Asian. His father sired other children in Kenya, so Obama has half-siblings in Africa.Obama’s sister is married to a Chinese-Canadian. Obama himself is married to an African-American who is an heir to “The Legacy,” which is why the Republicans depicted her as an “angry black woman,” and why she made that much-criticized comment about feeling proud of her country for the first time in her life. His wife’s brother is married to a white woman. Not only is Obama a walking “melting pot,” he’s a living United Nations. Not many people could look at his background and not see themselves somewhere.Having said all that, I don’t believe that Obama “transcends” race. If he “transcended” race, he would have won a landslide in the popular vote, including a strong majority of white votes, if not the 95 per cent he got from blacks. He did get a landslide in the Electoral College, though, and that’s historic in itself, and something to be proud of.Obama didn’t transcend race – he overcame it. Especially by winning Virginia, the heartland of the old Confederacy, where statues to Confederate Civil War heroes line the public square of the state capital, Richmond. Of course, now there’s a statue of Arthur Ashe in that square, too, so maybe that was an omen.What Obama accomplished is more than good enough for me. Maybe we’ll transcend race some time in the future, but I’ll take overcoming it any day of the week.Now, Obama created expectations greater than those set by any president since John F. Kennedy, under very different circumstances. I hope he meets them. If he does, then both black and white people in the country of my birth will be able to turn the page on “The Legacy.” That doesn’t mean forgetting it; but it does mean that it will no longer hold such a central position in our hearts and minds – and will cease being such an obstacle to moving forward.When Ronald Reagan was first elected President, he said it was “morning in America.”It wasn’t.Maybe now, it is.
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