It was not the successful presidential candidate mounting the stage in Grant Park, Chicago, to give his victory speech who provided the iconic image of US election night 2008, but rather the old civil rights campaigner, Jesse Jackson, who was filmed with tears coursing down his cheeks at the news of an Obama win. While the younger generation jumped up and down and cheered and shouted, the members of the older generation were overcome by deeper emotions.
For those who lived through the civil rights movement, it must hardly seem believable that the marches from Selma to Montgomery have finally ended in Pennsylvania Avenue. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus to a white man – the catalyst of the civil rights struggle – the year was 1955; Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech was in 1963; the Civil Rights Act, 1964; and the Voting Rights Act, 1965. And these events are all well within living memory. They are not some happenings whose details are buried in dusty tomes on a library shelf; many, many thousands of people have direct or indirect memories of them. And for the African-Americans who lived through that era, there is a profound understanding of the road which has brought Senator Obama to the White House.
It is not so much that the US has changed fundamentally from the days of apartheid in the Deep South in the early 1960s – it has − but that it has done so somewhat more quickly than history often permits (which is not to suggest that racism in the United States will now disappear, or that the problems of African-Americans in the inner cities will evaporate, or that there will suddenly be equality of educational opportunities, etc, etc). More than a hundred years elapsed between the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and the Voting Rights Act − years which were marked by oppression and untold suffering. And yet from Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus bridge in March 1965, to the 2008 election is just forty-three years – years of progress in key respects.
That aside, what one has to say is that the US electorate has vindicated the world’s faith in its capacity to correct mistakes – in the immediate instance the election of 2004. MNSBC has reported that there were three pillars of Senator Obama’s success – African-American voters, Hispanics and young white voters. To a much lesser degree, it was said, the President-elect obtained some support from college-educated white voters. The young white voters who turned out for the Democratic candidate had little thought for the historical context in which his campaign by implication was located; all they knew was that they were opposed to President George W Bush, they were choosing change and hope, and it really didn’t matter what colour Senator Obama was. That is the new American generation, and they should be given credit for their vision and for not being trammelled by the limiting perceptions of some of their elders.
However, it was perhaps not just among the young white voters that some kind of shift in the American political landscape can be seen; in certain areas, namely, Pennsylvania and Ohio especially, Mr Obama won because of the blue-collar vote. He was helped, of course, by a relentless campaign on the part of the unions, but still, perhaps even the Obama campaign team may have been surprised that some white workers who had an instinctive reluctance to vote for an African-American were in the end prepared to place their economic interests ahead of any private prejudices they may have been harbouring. That too is a change, albeit of a very qualified nature.
The President-elect will take over the White House at a time of crisis on all fronts; it will not be easy to fulfil the hopes that his soaring rhetoric has aroused among so many of his countrymen and women. Nevertheless, he will begin his term with a nation behind him that believes that America can recover, not one that under President Bush was beset by anxiety if not despondency. Far more can be achieved by a nation which believes in itself and has an optimistic outlook, than one which sees gloom all around. The 44th President of the United States will find that a restored faith in government, at least in the short term, will be an important advantage when making difficult decisions.
But that is for the period after the swearing in at the beginning of next year. In the meantime, the soldiers of the civil rights movement can indulge a certain satisfaction that when he takes the oath of office in January, the new President will be standing on their shoulders.
