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| My family celebrating the Obama victory in Chicago in 2008 |
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| Family voting block for Obama in Chicago, Nov 6, 2012 - white, Latina, Asians in the house! |
I remember the
sheer jubilation of the 2008 election and I’m comparing it to the measured
feelings I have this morning.
Four years ago
we dragged our then 14 year-old teenager, Ariel, out of the house and down to
Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate the victory of president-elect Barack Obama.
We wanted her to witness history. We went with a pack of new parents and
strollers (all of us interracial families and mixed-race folks, by the way).
The crowd went wild when the election was called. “OBAMA, OBAMA, OBAMA” we
shouted along with thousands, jumping up and down. Midori, then 3-years old,
couldn’t handle the noise and broke down in tears. Ariel wasn’t sure what the
big deal was just yet but my husband, Mitch, and I were beyond ecstatic. It
seemed that this was more than a presidential election…this was the fulfillment
of Martin Luther King’s dream! Pure hope.
With the
inauguration of the first black (or biracial) president, claims were made that we
had entered a “post-racial” era. And then the economy tanked and racial issues
were reduced to the triviality of “Beergate.”
“Race” was a tricky subject the President wished to avoid so he could
pragmatically deal with bigger issues. I understand and it may be true that “race”
is not the issue of the day anymore (or at least how we used to conceptualize
it), but, amongst other things, access to power and privilege and social
inequality remain a concern.
Ariel is now 18
and part of that 10% Latino/a vote that made such a difference last night. I
was very proud that we could join her for her first time voting. Through
Twitter, she quickly noticed that her peers were posting pictures of their
ballots on Facebook and Instagram and she helped get out the word via social
media not to do this since this invalidates
ballots in many states. During the debates we had watched TV together and
had two cell phones going with multiple Twitter and Facebook conversations and
feeds. The way we watched and participated in the elections had changed and it
was fun to hear the 18-year old perspective and my 30-40+ demographic friends'
perspectives. With the “1980s calling for their foreign policy back” and
“binders full of women,” the debates seemed to be a comedic farce though.
I was so nervous
about the election yesterday that we opted for a quiet election watching party
(with drinks and lefty friends) rather than the downtown Chicago crowds. I had
resigned myself to a long night of watching the results come in. We went home
and I tucked Midori into bed and no sooner did I kiss her goodnight than the
phone rang and my brother Sam called from Washington DC with the news. We heard
the cheers from the TV and we were soon all jumping up and down on the bed.
OBAMA, OBAMA, OBAMA!
I dozed off
while waiting for Romney to concede but woke up again to hear Obama’s victory
address. "Hope is a stubborn thing. Not
blind optimism…We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions."
Yes, so true. I
was beaming with relief and pride but then he said something else that made me
pause:
"This country has more wealth than any nation, but
that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history,
but that's not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the
envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.
What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most
diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny is shared — (cheers,
applause) — that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to
one another and to future generations, so that the freedom which so many
Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as
rights, and among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's
what makes America great. (Cheers, applause.)" (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=164540079)
I haven’t had time to fully process this yet but the
proximity of “exceptional” and “destiny” makes me think of “manifest destiny”
and “American exceptionalism.” Is it possible to be patriotic and not, as one
of my Facebook friends noted, to display “national chauvinism”?
I drove my 7-year daughter to the bus stop for school today.
We live in a very diverse Jewish/South Asian neighborhood. A
little boy named Mohammed ran up to us and said, “Guess who is president today?
OBAMA!” The group of kids at the bus stop cheered. Many of the kids held
mock-elections at their schools and all reported landslide victories for Obama.
The parents (who are black, South Asian, East Asian, and white) all expressed a
collective sigh of relief and went on to discuss drones, deportation and the rising
cost of higher education.
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