|
Edited on Wed Dec-12-07 10:18 PM by ClarkUSA
All of us should be proud of what happened this past weekend, not out of any rank political partisanship, but because we were witness
to a truly seminal moment in American racial history. Richard Cohen, longtime Washington Post op-ed columnist and an Iowa native,
attended the Des Moines kick-off rally of The Double O Express weekend tour. Afterwards he explained his pride in how far America
and Iowa has come since he was a kid in junior high:
DES MOINES -- It is 1,134 miles and 53 years since Jerome Schlicter, a teacher, walked into my eighth-grade classroom and held up
the New York Times. The headline read "High Court Bans School Segregation," and it ran clear across the top of the page in skyscraper
letters. It was very rare to see such a headline, Schlicter told us, and we sat, the boys in ties, the girls in dresses, feeling somehow a
part of history ourselves. I had that same feeling the other day.
The event was the joint appearance of Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama at the Hy-Vee Hall here before an estimated 18,500 people,
the vast majority of them -- the very vast majority of them -- white. They screamed first for Michelle Obama, incredibly slim and
very stylish, and then -- louder, much louder -- for Oprah and then, as if it were not possible, in equal decibels for Obama, youthful,
trim, sleek, a Mercury carrying an important message: himself.
You could look up at the stage, at the immense crowd, and marvel at it all. Here in the heartland of a nation founded on the twin
principles of freedom and slavery, here in the middle of an America once so racist that blacks in the South could not even try on
shoes before buying them, was the most powerful media personality of our times, a black woman. Next to her stood the possible
Democratic presidential nominee, a black man. And to the audience none of that mattered... History, like light itself, is unfelt. You
could have asked some Florentine during the Renaissance what it was like to live in the Renaissance -- wow, Leonardo and
Michelangelo! -- and he would have been puzzled. The Renaissance? This is the Renaissance? It is the same now, and the
wonder of Obama, the wonder of Oprah -- two African Americans who have managed to uncouple "African" from "American" -
- is hardly even noticed. Jerry Schlicter would not have believed it.
At the moment, the prudent would call the Iowa race a dead heat -- Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards all plus-or-minus
within the statistical margin of error. But it is Obama who is gaining in the latest polls, Clinton who is slipping... Hillary, too, is a
historic figure -- former first lady, current U.S. senator and the first really serious female presidential candidate. Yet somehow
she has become the personification of the status quo, a stale establishment figure. Obama has Oprah; Hillary gets Barbra Streisand.
One is today. The other is yesterday. The Iowa caucuses put a premium on organization -- just getting your people out on what is
usually a very cold night. Only a sliver of the eligibles actually participate, and while I make no prediction, I can say with absolute
certainty that most of those who came out on a lethally cold day over the weekend to see Oprah and Obama will stay home on
caucus night.
Still, there is no doubt that the zeitgeist whispers the name Obama, that he electrified the crowd here with a strong, passionate
speech and that it was impossible, if not historically irresponsible, to look at that platform -- three African Americans -- and at
the immense and mostly white crowd and not feel that something big was happening. Obama's banner captured that: "Change
we can believe in."
It has taken 1,134 miles and 53 years, but just as it was with the newspaper that Jerry Schlicter held up, this was a change that
did not require belief. You could see it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121001561_pf.html
Beautiful. :-)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
