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Last night I woke my 9-month-old baby—fast asleep in her Obama shirt—to watch the acceptance speech. My computer cord shorted out in a giant tumbler of champagne. I wept, and then wept again, and then wept again; Jesse Jackson's tears jerked my own the hardest. For the first time in my life, people took to the streets in celebration of something good, something I believe. If the adage is true that we get the government we deserve, then we have made ourselves, finally, to be something deserving, after all. It is the first time in my life I believe in my country. Barack Obama made me, and millions of us, do that.
"It's been a long time coming," he said last night. Those words lead off the refrain to Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," which has been playing in my head since, as I check and recheck the headlines to convince myself that this is history, not reverie. The song has sounded like a dream ever-deferred. Today, it feels more like a lyrical journey to what led us here and a reminder that just as we've crossed that distance, so we might advance more, after all this time moving backward. Holding my baby on my lap last night, I was most particularly moved, like Dahlia, by Obama's account of the century Ann Nixon Cooper has witnessed in her 106-year march to yesterday's vote.
I have no doubt that Obama has the deepest regard for the shoulders that he stands upon today. But if this is going to be a true victory for all of us, he must summon that regard not just to the black America that has endured a painful journey, from slave auctions, to the bullets that ricocheted through the Audubon ballroom, to this day. He'll have to address the continued erosion of civil and human rights. In the same country that has elected this extraordinary man, African-Americans constitute 49 percent of our prison population (compared with 13 percent of our total population). More black men are incarcerated than are in college. The average black life expectancy has declined to what it was in 1970. A recent study on the housing crisis concludes that "the subprime lending debacle has caused the greatest loss of wealth to people of color in modern U.S. history." Obama did not campaign on these issues, but to make good on the moral promise of his presidency and not just the symbolic one, he will need to focus on the specific challenges to African-Americans as well as all Americans.
The New York Times says today, "No Time for Laurels; Now the Hard Part"; I say this is a moment to bask in what we have delivered unto ourselves. I plan to keep crying and playing Sam Cooke for my baby for at least another few days. But in listening to Cooke's words, I must remember that this election hasn't closed the book. Rather, by turning the page, we're still pushing through the same narrative, chapter by chapter.
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