Sunday, November 09, 2008
Opinion

Not yet in the Promised Land


I thought about Frederick Douglass as the election returns rolled in on Tuesday

By 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 Nov. 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.

Along with Obama’s many other political skills, he is the most adept politician since Ronald Reagan at reading 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 how that category included as many black people as white ones. I long ago recognized that African-Americans take comfort in the 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 one of us thought that whites were prepared to vote in significant—let alone tremendous—numbers for a black presidential candidate. Yet they were.

There’s a reason that Obama received only marginal black support before winning the Iowa caucus. The 96 percent of the black vote that he won on Election Day was possible only because 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 N****rs 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 underachieving, 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.

But 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 New Orleans streets was only three years ago, or that African-American men still have the shortest life expectancy of any 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. Just as it seems risqué to bring up the fact that though Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest president of the 20th century, was confined to a wheelchair, 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.” That remark 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, Nov. 4, 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. SP
Guest columnist Jelani Cobb is a history professor at Spelman College. Stephanie Ramage’s column will resume next week.