It’s About Making Babies!

I listened to President-elect Obama’s victory speech yesterday – Christy at Christy’s Coffee Break gathered a set of videos that included the full twenty-some minutes. (Thanks, Christie!) Today LisaQ asks on 20-Forty.com, “Will Obama’s Victory Affect Attitudes Toward Interracial Dating?”

I think time will tell. For one thing, all the news reports and comments describe how divisive the voting was. African-Americans came out in record numbers – not to join the rest of the voters in America, but to put “one of their own” into office. That isn’t the same thing – this is an act of hatred and distrust and suspicion about those outside the African-American community.

Obama made great use of his membership in the Black Congressional Caucus. His pastor for twenty years preached about how the members of his congregation suffered because they were African-American and oppressed by those outside the African-American community.

Looking at the rallies, and the public gatherings around the country that responded to President-elect Obama’s victory speech, it appeared many African-Americans and others joined in jubilation, in sharing a victory for Obama in the election. For many, this shared happiness and hope will break down barriers.

But let’s not forget the many instances where African-American voters were ignorant of everything about the election – except that Obama was Black.

Change is measured in pain. If Obama does achieve many of the claims he has made – quadruple electric bills, tax ‘rich’ – and to much of the African-American community, ‘rich’ means ‘not African-American’ – a safe enemy to hold up for African-American consumption – people and companies to increase government payments and programs to benefit the poor, there will be lots of pain to go around.

Depending on how things shake out, Obama could unite the country, or divide us into armed camps. All the pieces are in place to ignite a major class and/or racial war. What hasn’t happened (yet) is an intent to merge cultures. To abandon the ‘African-American’ leaders and values and community, to decide that there is a greater world, and learn to participate and live there.

Like an abused wife who doesn’t leave her husband, much of the worst inequities of living in the United States lie just an individual choice – to change – away from resolution. Not today, nor tomorrow, but many have waited generations without making that choice.

In my day, the United States was called “the melting pot of the world.” That phrase still gets tossed around, occasionally, but we no longer recall how the Scandanavians and Russians and Italians and Hungarians and Irish came, and made this land their own. The Vietnamese and many Chinese have left their initial enclaves – like most of the immigrants before them – and we seldom take a second glance at Ngoc Lee managing our local theatre. My great-grandparents came from Femarn, an island in the North Sea between northern Germany and Denmark, and from Ireland. For most purposes my grandparents were just lumped together as ‘white’.

What impact will President-elect Obama have on the culture and the community of America? Will the African-American communities that united to put “one of their own” in office now join the larger community of Americans as equal, respected members when they united to oppose it? Will all African-Americans begin to make friends outside their community as quickly as they do inside?

And why would you worry about inter-racial dating – unless you found a partner-prospect of good character, good background, good emotional and mental health, and worthy of your attention? Stereotypes, positive or negative, are immensely dangerous and unfair, especially in private and intimate affairs.