Last night as my wife and I watched the election coverage, I felt waves of emotion sweep over me. My eyes welled because it felt as if finally, enough Americans like me had banded together to change the system. Enough of us had placed our trust in the electoral voting process to elect one of us, a politician who was from modest means, had not been treading in the tainted waters of the system, and who seemed humble and burdened when he stepped up on stage to make his speech. I felt as if we had finally taken a look at where we were, and decided that after all, we needed to do something drastic to survive. We couldn't drown in the moat that we had dug.
Watching the newscasts, I wasn't sure if it was intentional or just the fact of the matter, that McCain supporters were primarily white, whereas Obama supporters were decidedly mixed. Everytime they cut to an African American supporter, I wondered if the press was making a concious judgment call. I had been listening to a lot of NPR election coverage, and this election has really brought racial relations and prejudice front and center. People started to wear their prejudices on their sleeves. Some were honest about it, others hid it under the labels of inexperience, religion, and even loose associations with terrorism. I didn't really want to look at it that way, figured it was just those middle states, whereby they were mostly Republican and not progressive thinking.
But this morning when I went to work, I witnessed the kind of bitterness in McCain supporters that I honestly didn't expect. They were almost spiteful in their attitudes. I didn't flare up when Gore lost, but I was upset when Bush got his second term because it seemed evident that America was heading in a terrible direction. But Obama really doesn't have the history to signify that he was going to lead the country in a bad direction. He didn't seem to have any radical ideas or overt promises that would lead us astray.
So to be upfront, most of the people I work with are Asian immigrants, mostly Southeast Asians, and some from the African nations. They are also mostly at most high school educated also. So in the morning, one of the more vocal assemblers, a 20 some year veteran, was sarcastically cheering for Obama. Then as work progressed, my immediate co-workers, some of which didn't even vote, starting talking about Obama.
"4 years of hell."
"He's going to give tax breaks to hip-hop artists."
"What does Michelle Obama do? Freebase."
It's one of the moments when I get absolutely disappointed with humankind, our potential to hate without reason, to judge with extreme prejudice. It's a crushing feeling because it's human nature at it's ugliest. It's like someone scraped the bottoms of our dark souls and stuck it on the tip of our tongues. I may not be able to state Obama's stance on healthcare, education, or his policies, but I simply refuse to talk to anyone who cannot look past the color of his skin. I'm not saying that I'm impervious to casual prejudices and generalizations, but outright bile like the shit I hear at work makes me angry. Not because they are mocking my candidate and our future president, but because they are expelling hate toward an individual who has not warranted any of that aggression past the color of his skin.
Obama has a tremendous burden to bear, to live up to the expectations of Democrats, Republicans, African-Americans, and world leaders. It is a bittersweet victory to see Obama get elected, and at the same time see all the racism that's been simmering in so many souls.
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