Asad Haider | Guest Room
I stayed away from the news on election night. In my stupor, all I could do was wipe my brow and listen as the classic Parliament track “Chocolate City” bumped through my brain. “We didn’t get our 40 acres and a mule, but we did get you,” declared the great musical statesman George Clinton. “A chocolate city is no dream.”
It was a dream to me, while I was growing up. The white America that had for so long relied on African-American culture for innovation and vitality continued to teach us that the universal human being was white. When I was a kid, there was nobody on TV who looked like me, and there was no reason for the many people who asked me, “Where are you from?” to believe that I was American. So it was the dreams of the African-American struggle for power and recognition that inspired me, and black culture was my American culture.
In the shadow government of Parliament’s “Chocolate City,” the majority black population of Washington D.C. is represented by a Cabinet that includes President Muhammad Ali, Minister of Education Richard Pryor, Secretary of Fine Arts Stevie Wonder, and First Lady Aretha Franklin. The song pointed to the central role black people played in building our country and our culture, while reminding us that only in a funk fantasy-world would America allow itself to be led by them.
Racism is easy to get used to. At first, like civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, I was skeptical of Barack Obama. Black leaders have run for president before, but who ever thought they would win? People like Jesse Jackson used the election, to bring attention to social issues ignored by mainstream politics.
Obama did not follow this approach. He was decidedly moderate in his statements on the issues and his policy proposals. He was not the kind of candidate I could feel enthusiastic about.
After the surprise of his victory in the primaries, I began to appreciate his pragmatic strategy. In American politics images matter, and language matters. With one hand Obama played it safe on policy, and with the other he managed to sneak rhetoric into the mainstream presidential race that revolved around the word “change.” The meaning of this word went far beyond concrete political substance—it had to do with the recognition that politics is history, that history is a movement of revolution and transformation. The change that led up to this historical moment was so radical that it made a black candidate possible; Obama’s words gave the nation a vision of an even more radical future.
When major media outlets finally began to call the election, all I could manage to feel was relief. But it was only when I saw the news footage of Jesse Jackson bursting into tears that I began to appreciate the magnitude of what Barack Obama has done for me. I remembered the struggle that African-Americans had waged so that people like me could feel safe in our homes; I remembered how many people tried to achieve what Obama did and ran into a 400-year old brick wall of hatred and self-defeating cynicism. I remembered every goal I had ever crossed off of my list because I assumed that my complexion disqualified me, I remembered the debt I owe to those who sacrificed their lives for my generation, and I cried too.
Obama did not concern himself with radical policy ideas because he was not running to make a point. He was running to win. If a country that just decades ago took legal apartheid for granted could elect Obama as its leader, nothing is impossible for people of color. I realized on election night that I had internalized racism so deeply that I was unable to take a black candidate seriously. Now those of us who let a whitewashed society sell our futures short can begin to take ourselves seriously.
Barack Obama is not only a Black American; he was the son of a Muslim immigrant from the Third World, and like me, grew up in a society that considered this inexcusably foreign. He has a name that is a synonym for “terrorist” in a post-9/11 climate of bigotry and fear. The way right-wing commentators hatefully spat out “Barack Hussein Obama” reminded me of the way that my name was used against me after 2001.
The Obama presidency is the first American phenomenon since Harold and Kumar go to White Castle that represents me. But Barack Obama doesn’t just represent a minority, or an identity. He represents the power that comes from the margins — the possibility that all of us who grew up on the outside can be in charge.
And make no mistake — we’re gaining on you. Dave Chappelle, Speaker of the House; Kal Penn and John Cho, Secretaries of Health and Human Services; Kanye West, Minister of Education; Missy Elliot, Secretary of the Interior; Junot Diaz, Secretary of Fine Arts.
“They still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition,” said Parliament. Can you dig it, America?
Asad Haider is a student in the College of Arts and Sciences. Send letters to opinion@cornellsun.com [1]. Guest Room appears periodically.
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