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<title>The Joshua Generation: Race and the campaign of Barack Obama - David Remnick</title>
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margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:12.0pt;
mso-outline-level:2;background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:18.0pt;
text-transform:uppercase;mso-font-kerning:18.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The
Joshua Generation<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;background:white'><b><i><span
lang=EN style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Race and the campaign of
Barack Obama</span></i></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'>This is a fabulous, informative, and insightful piece by David <span
class=SpellE>Remnick</span> about the role of race in the election of our 44<sup>th</sup>
President.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>� </span>Barack Obama is different
from the leaders of the Civil Rights movement who paved the way for his
historic victory; and they, like Moses, are not the ones who were destined to bring
the dream to fruition.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>� </span>It is, instead,
the next generation, who, like Joshua, carry the dream forward into the
Promised Land.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span class=SpellE><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Remnick</span></span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'> says of Obama near the end of the piece,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Having cast himself in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Selma</st1:City></st1:place> twenty months ago as
one who stood on the �shoulders of giants,� as the leader of the Joshua
generation, he hardly had to mention race. It was the thing always present, the
thing so rarely named. He had simultaneously celebrated identity and pushed it
into the background. �Change has come to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>,� Obama declared<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Perhaps he can lead all of us into the �Promised
Land� of the fulfillment of the American dream.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-family:
Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-family:
Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN'><a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/17/081117fa_fact_remnick"
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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:5.25pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:12.0pt;mso-outline-level:2;background:white'><b><span
lang=EN style='text-transform:uppercase;mso-font-kerning:18.0pt;mso-ansi-language:
EN'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:5.25pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
7.5pt;margin-left:0in;mso-line-height-alt:12.0pt;mso-outline-level:2;
background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:18.0pt;text-transform:uppercase;
mso-font-kerning:18.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The Joshua Generation<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<h2 style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:5.25pt;margin-left:
0in;background:white'><i><span lang=EN style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:
EN;mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>Race and the campaign of Barack Obama</span></i><i><span
lang=EN style='font-size:11.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN;font-weight:normal'>.<o:p></o:p></span></i></h2>
<h4 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:4.5pt;margin-left:
0in;background:white'><span class=GramE><span class=ccs><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>by</span></span></span><span class=ccs><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'> <a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/search/query?query=authorName:%22David%20Remnick%22">David
<span class=SpellE>Remnick</span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></h4>
<h4 style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:4.5pt;margin-left:
0in;background:white'><span class=dddds><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'>November 17, 2008</span></span><span class=dddds><span lang=EN
style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> </span></span><span lang=EN
style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>�</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1026"
type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Speaking at a church in Selma, Obama was not a patriarch and not a prophet but the prophesied. �I�m here because somebody marched,� he said. �I�m here because you all sacrificed for me.�"
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src="Remnick_files/image003.jpg"
alt="Speaking at a church in Selma, Obama was not a patriarch and not a prophet but the prophesied. �I�m here because somebody marched,� he said. �I�m here because you all sacrificed for me.�"
v:shapes="_x0000_i1026"><![endif]><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:15.6pt;background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'>Speaking at a church in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Selma</st1:place></st1:City>, Obama was not a patriarch and not a
prophet but the prophesied. �I�m here because somebody marched,� he said. �I�m
here because you all sacrificed for me.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>1</span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Barack Obama could not
run his campaign for the Presidency based on political accomplishment or on the
heroic service of his youth. His record was too slight. His Democratic and
Republican opponents were right: he ran largely on language, on the expression
of a country�s potential and the self-expression of a complicated man who could
reflect and lead that country. And a powerful thematic undercurrent of his
oratory and prose was race. Not race as invoked by his predecessors in
electoral politics or in the civil-rights movement, not race as an insistence
on tribe or on redress; rather, Obama made his biracial ancestry a metaphor for
his ambition to create a broad coalition of support, to rally Americans behind
a narrative of moral and political progress. He was not its hero, but he just
might be its culmination. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In October, 2005, two months
after Hurricane Katrina, Rosa Parks died, at the age of ninety-two, in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:City>. Her signal act
of defiance on the evening of December 1, 1955, her refusal to vacate her seat
near the front of the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama�what Martin
Luther King, Jr., called the ultimate gesture of �I can take it no longer��was
the precipitating act of the city�s bus boycott and the civil-rights movement.
For two days, her body lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda, in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State>�an honor
accorded only twenty-nine times before. Then, on November 2nd, in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:City>, there was a
funeral service at the Greater Grace Temple Church. Thousands lined the streets
to wave farewell and sing the old anthems and hymns. Four thousand packed the
sanctuary. The service lasted seven hours. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�That funeral was so long that I
can hardly remember it!� Bishop T. D. Jakes, the pastor of the Potter�s House,
a <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dallas</st1:place></st1:City> church
of thirty thousand congregants, said. �<i>Everyone</i> was there!� Jesse
Jackson, the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clintons</st1:place></st1:City>,
Al <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span>, Aretha Franklin, and a phalanx of
preachers all paid tribute to Parks. Bill Clinton reminisced about riding
segregated buses in Jim Crow Arkansas�and then feeling the liberating effect of
<span class=SpellE>Parks�s</span> act. On the street, a marine played �Amazing
Grace� on the bagpipes, and the congregants sang �She Would Not Be Moved.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama, the sole African-American
member in the United States Senate, had also been invited to speak. As he sat
in the pews awaiting his turn, he writes in his book �The Audacity of Hope,�
his mind wandered back to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina: the news
footage from New Orleans of a body laid near a wall, of shirtless young men,
�their legs churning through dark waters, their arms draped with whatever goods
they had managed to grab from nearby stores, the spark of chaos in their eyes.�
A week after the hurricane, Obama had accompanied Bill and Hillary Clinton and
George H. W. Bush to Houston, where they visited the thousands of refugees from
New Orleans who were camped out at the Astrodome and the Reliant Center. One
woman told Obama, <span class=GramE>�We didn�t have <span class=SpellE>nothin</span>�
before the storm.</span> Now we got less than <span class=SpellE>nothin</span>�.�
The remark was a rebuke, Obama felt, to Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush
Administration officials who had given him and fellow-legislators a briefing on
the federal response to the hurricane; their expressions, he recalled,
�bristled with confidence�and displayed not the slightest bit of remorse.� In
the church, Obama thought of how little had happened since. Cars were still
stuck in trees and on rooftops; predatory construction firms were winning
hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts, even as they skirted
affirmative-action laws and hired illegal immigrants for their crews. Obama�s
anger, which is rarely discernible in his voice or in his demeanor, ran deep.
�The sense that the nation had reached a transformative moment�that it had had
its conscience stirred out of a long slumber and would launch a renewed war on
poverty�had quickly died away,� he wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>And yet when Obama got to the
lectern at <span class=SpellE>Parks�s</span> funeral he betrayed no emotion, raised
no words of protest. He was restrained and brief, as if taking pains to say
nothing to compete with the Clintons, who had forged a close bond with the
African-American community over the years, let alone the older organizers,
activists, and preachers. Obama was still a relative stranger to the audience
in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:City>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�In terms of operating in the
space of African-American politics, people hadn�t seen him much,� Mark <span
class=SpellE>Morial</span>, a former mayor of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:City> and the president of the National
Urban League, said. �They didn�t really know who he was, where he came from, or
what he was all about. You don�t come in there as a senator and try to upstage
anyone or abuse the podium and give a speech that�s too good. He has to think, <span
class=GramE>My</span> presence is enough. The people who worked with Rosa
Parks�this was their time to speak.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>It was only on March 4, 2007, a
few weeks after he announced his candidacy for President, that Obama explicitly
inserted himself in the time line of American racial politics. At the <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Brown</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Chapel</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceName w:st="on"><span class=SpellE>A.M.E</span>.</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Church</st1:PlaceType>, in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Selma</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">Alabama</st1:State></st1:place>, he joined older
civil-rights leaders and churchmen in commemorating the voting-rights marches a
generation ago. From the pulpit, Obama paid tribute to �the Moses
generation��to Martin Luther King and John Lewis, to Anna Cooper and the
Reverend Joseph Lowery�the men and women of the movement, who marched and
suffered but who, in many cases, �didn�t cross over the river to see the
Promised Land.� He thanked them, praised their courage, <span class=GramE>honored</span>
their martyrdom. But he spent much of his speech on his own generation, �the
Joshua generation,� and tried to answer the question �What�s called of us?�
Life had improved for African-Americans, but �we shouldn�t forget that better
is not good enough.� Discrimination still existed. History was being forgotten.
Schools were underfunded, citizens left uninsured, especially minorities.
People were looking for �that Oprah money� but had forgotten the need for
service, for discipline, for political will.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In Selma, Obama evoked a
narrative for what lay ahead, and in that narrative Obama was not a patriarch
and not a prophet but�the suggestion was distinct�the prophesied. �I�m here
because somebody marched,� he said. �I�m here because you all sacrificed for
me. I stand on the shoulders of giants.� He described the work that lay ahead
for the Joshua generation and implicitly positioned himself at its head, as its
standard-bearer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>And yet Obama embarked on a long,
exhausting quest for the Democratic nomination, determined to avoid making race
a singular theme of his day-to-day campaigning. His issues were <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the
economy, health care, the environment�issues with no identity attached. But as
he prepared for the Democratic Convention Obama began to feel the weight of his
historic distinction.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>On August 28th, just hours before
his speech at Mile High Stadium, in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Denver</st1:place></st1:City>,
Obama had been rehearsing in a suite at the Westin Hotel. That night, he would
appear before more than eighty thousand people. Now his audience was three: his
political strategist, David Axelrod; a speechwriter, Jon <span class=SpellE>Favreau</span>;
and the teleprompter operator. The rehearsal was mainly an exercise in comfort,
in making sure that there was no awkward syntax, no barriers to clarity. Late
in the speech, Obama came to a passage paying homage to the March on <st1:State
w:st="on">Washington</st1:State>, forty-five years earlier to the day, when
hundreds of thousands of people gathered near the Lincoln Memorial to �hear a
young preacher from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Georgia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
speak of his dream.� Suddenly, Obama stopped. He couldn�t get past the phrase
�forty-five years ago.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�There was a catch in his voice,�
Axelrod recalled. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama excused himself and took a
short, calming walk around the room. �This is really hitting me,� he said.
Obama told Axelrod and <span class=SpellE>Favreau</span> that he was coming to
realize what a �big deal this is.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Usually, he is so composed, but
he needed the time,� Axelrod said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�It�s funny, I think all of us go through this,� <span
class=SpellE>Favreau</span> recalled. �We�ve gone through this whole campaign
and, contrary to what anyone might think, we don�t think of the history much,
because it�s a crazy environment and you�re going twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week. And so there are very few moments�and I think it�s the same
with Barack�there are very few moments when he stops and thinks, I could be the
first African-American elected President.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>2 </span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Long before he ever had
to think through the implications, racial and otherwise, of running for
President, Barack Obama needed to make sense of himself�to himself. The memoir
that he published when he was thirty-three, �Dreams from My Father,� explored
his biracial heritage: his white Kansas-born mother, his black Kenyan father,
almost completely absent from his life. The memoir is written with more
freedom, with greater introspection and irony, than any other by a modern American
politician. Obama introduces himself as an American whose childhood took him to
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Indonesia</st1:country-region> and <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:State>, whose
grandfathers included Hussein <span class=SpellE>Onyango</span> Obama, �a
prominent farmer, an elder of the tribe, a medicine man with healing powers.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>As a young man, Obama was
consumed with self-doubt, trying always to reconcile the unsettling
contradictions of his history. His parents married in 1960, when interracial
marriage was still prohibited in almost half the states of the union. As Obama
entered adolescence, in <st1:State w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:State>, his father had
returned to <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place> and started a new family,
but, at the same time, the boy was careful around his white friends not to
mention his mother�s race; he began to think that by doing so he was
ingratiating himself with whites. He learned to read unease in the faces of
others, the �split second adjustments they have to make,� when they found out
that he was the son of a mixed marriage. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Privately, they guess at my
troubled heart, I suppose�the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image
of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds,� he writes, with the wry
distance of the older self regarding the younger.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama�s mother was an earnest and
high-minded idealist, �a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for the
New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism.� With Barack�s father gone,
she emphasized, even sentimentalized, blackness to her son. She loved the film
�Black Orpheus,� which her son later found so patronizing to the �childlike�
characters that he wanted to walk out of the theatre. She�d bring home the
records of <span class=SpellE>Mahalia</span> Jackson, the speeches of Martin
Luther King. To her, �every black man was <span class=SpellE>Thurgood</span>
Marshall or Sidney Poitier; every black woman Fannie Lou <span class=SpellE>Hamer</span>
or Lena Horne. To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a
special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>As a teen-ager in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:State>, Obama suffered
less from outright discrimination than from the sense that �something wasn�t
quite right�; he was put off by the white girls who told him about their
affection for Stevie Wonder, by the older white men who told him he was cool.
Surrounded mainly by white relations and friends, Obama looked for a mentor.
Holed up in his room and ignoring his homework, he read James Baldwin, Ralph
Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and W. E. B. Du Bois and tried to
�reconcile the world as I�d found it with the terms of my birth�:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:.25in;line-height:15.6pt;background:white'><span class=line1><span
lang=EN style='font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>But there was no escape to
be had. In every page of every book, in Bigger Thomas and invisible men, I kept
finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony
nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even Du <span class=SpellE>Bois�s</span>
learning and Baldwin�s love and Langston�s humor eventually succumbed to its
corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art�s redemptive power, each
man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into
the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them
exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. Only Malcolm X�s autobiography
seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke
to me.</span></span><span class=break><span lang=EN style='font-size:9.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'> </span></span><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�The Autobiography of Malcolm X�
did not turn Obama into a black nationalist or a street preacher, but it did
provide a literary and personal template: the story of the young black <span
class=GramE>man</span> who flirts with dissolution and, through reading and
determination, realizes his potential. It is the template of many such books,
including Claude Brown�s �<span class=SpellE>Manchild</span> in the Promised
Land.� <span class=GramE>�Junkie.</span> Pothead,� Obama wrote. �That�s where
I�d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama, of course, never suffered
like the young Malcolm <span class=GramE>Little</span> or Claude Brown; <st1:City
w:st="on">Honolulu</st1:City> in the seventies was not <st1:City w:st="on">Lansing</st1:City>
in the thirties or <st1:place w:st="on">Harlem</st1:place> in the forties. But
the key difference was in the nature of his quest for identity. To be black
was, for him, as much a matter of aspiration as of inheritance. It was an
identity he had to seek out and master. When Obama shared his adolescent
reading with some African-American friends, one told him, �I don�t need <span
class=GramE>no</span> books to tell me how to be black.� From then on, Obama
decided to keep his explorations to himself and �disguise my feverish mood.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Sometimes, as one reads �Dreams
from My Father,� it�s hard to know where the real angst ends and the
self-dramatizing of the backward glance begins, but there is little doubt that
Obama was at sea, particularly where race was concerned. To ease that pain, to
�flatten out the landscape of my heart,� he would do what kids sometimes do: he
drank, he smoked grass, and, in his unforgettably offhand formulation, he did
�a little blow� when he �could afford it.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>What Obama did learn in those
days was the strategic benefit of a calm and inviting temperament. When his
mother came to his room one day, prepared to remonstrate with him about his
weak performance in school and the hazy direction that his life was taking, he
flashed her, as he recalls, �a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told
her not to worry.� He didn�t get his back up, he didn�t yell. People, he was
learning, �were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no
sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved�such a pleasant
surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn�t seem angry all the
time.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The historian David Levering
Lewis, who has written biographies of King and Du Bois, told me that after
reading Obama�s books he had the sense of a young man almost alone in the
world, trying to find a place. �The orphanage of his life compels him to scope
out possibilities and escape hatches,� he said. �This very smart mother was
somewhat absent, and certainly the father was, and the grandfather marched with
Patton, but he was not a rock. Obama is in the world almost solo and he learns
to negotiate.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>When he arrived, in 1979,
as a freshman at <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Occidental</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">College</st1:PlaceType>, in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los
Angeles</st1:place></st1:City>, Obama wanted �to avoid being mistaken for a
sellout.� He hung around with the �politically active black students, the
foreign students . . . the Marxist professors and structural feminists and
punk�rock performance poets.� At night, in the dorms, they �discussed
neocolonialism, Frantz Fanon, <span class=SpellE>Eurocentrism</span>, and
patriarchy. . . . We were alienated.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>After Obama graduated from <st1:City
w:st="on">Columbia</st1:City> (he�d transferred for his last two years), he set
out for <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>,
in search of work as a community organizer. He would lie awake at night
thinking of �romantic images� of the civil-rights movement, the �grainy black
and white� scenes unspooling in his mind. He sought admission somehow into that
distant world of seriousness and commitment�a connection to �the Moses
generation.� He craved authentic experience, a sense of service and belonging,
and a racial identity: �That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of
redemption.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Methodically, Obama went about
meeting important members of the older generations on the South Side,
African-American elders who could advise him and, subtly, approve of him. <span
class=SpellE>Timuel</span> Black, an activist in his late eighties who has
published oral histories of the black migration from the South, told me that
Obama came to him eager to soak up everything he could about the politics,
churches, and neighborhoods of the city. But, even as Obama found his way as a
community organizer, working for tenants� rights and job training at the <span
class=SpellE>Altgeld</span> projects, on the far South Side, he never quite
stopped seeing in the faces of young black men reminders of his own past, and
the direction he might have taken:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:.25in;line-height:15.6pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><br>
<span class=line1>One of them could be me. Standing there, I try to remember
the days when I would have been sitting in a car like that, full of
inarticulate resentments and desperate to prove my place in the world. . . .
The swagger that carries me into a classroom drunk or high, knowing that my
teachers will smell beer or reefer on my breath, just daring them to say
something. </span></span><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:
EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama went to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Harvard</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Law</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">School</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, where he became
the first African-American elected president of the <i>Law Review</i>.
Studious, disciplined, ambitious, Obama received, in 1991, the honor of being
asked to speak at the annual banquet of the Harvard Black Law Students
Association, an occasion at which a prominent judge or attorney is usually
featured. One professor at the banquet, Randall Kennedy, was impressed by the
deference that a ballroom of students, so full of sap and self-regard, paid the
young man. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>As Kennedy followed Obama�s
career, he was struck by the uniqueness of his background and how it may have
affected both his temperament and his public appeal. �He�s operating outside
the precincts of black <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>,�
Kennedy said. �He is growing up in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:place></st1:State>,
for God�s sake. And then, when he comes to the mainland and tries to find his
way, he has to work at it. He does have to go find it. He is not socialized
like other people. I can�t help thinking that he might have thought it a burden
at the time, but maybe some of the things he missed out on were a benefit to
miss out on. For one thing, he didn�t absorb the learned responses, the learned
mantras and slogans, the learned resentments of that time that one got in
college.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>David Levering Lewis told me that he read the
memoir as if Obama were a densely layered character in a coming-of-age novel.
�To say he is constructing himself sounds pejorative, but he is open to the
world in a way that most Americans have not had the opportunity to be,� Lewis
said. �That is something that outsiders have to do. But, as he evolves, the
African-American pathway is the pathway to service, to success, and to a more
complete self-definition.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>3</span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>For Obama, the politics
of race took on a less abstract cast once he returned to <st1:City w:st="on">Chicago</st1:City>
and settled in <st1:place w:st="on">Hyde Park</st1:place>, with his wife,
Michelle. Hyde Park and Kenwood make up a South Side neighborhood that takes in
the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Chicago</st1:PlaceName> and is as distinctive as George H. W. Bush�s <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Greenwich</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Connecticut</st1:State></st1:place>.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the area was home to Jews (some of whom
came from <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> to escape anti-Semitism) and
blacks who were starting to enter the middle class. The neighborhood today is
racially mixed: of the forty-nine thousand residents, fifty-two per cent are
black, thirty per cent are white, nine per cent are Asian, <span class=GramE>four</span>
per cent are Hispanic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>A measure of self-regard is also
part of the <st1:place w:st="on">Hyde Park</st1:place> atmosphere. �It�s a
magical community,� John Rogers, Jr., a close friend of the <span class=SpellE>Obamas</span>,
who runs Ariel Investments, said. �When you remember that there have been just
three African-American senators since Reconstruction, it tells you something
that two of them, Barack and Carol Moseley Braun, came from <st1:place w:st="on">Hyde
Park</st1:place>.� (The third, Edward Brooke, was from <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Massachusetts</st1:place></st1:State>.) Louis Farrakhan�s
stained-glass-fronted house is a few blocks from Obama�s, and so is Jesse
Jackson�s Rainbow/</span><span class=smallcaps1><span lang=EN style='font-size:
8.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>PUSH</span></span><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> Coalition headquarters. Muhammad Ali once lived
nearby. �Hyde Park is the real world as it should be,� Obama�s friend and
adviser Valerie Jarrett told Peter <span class=SpellE>Slevin</span>, of the <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State> <i>Post</i>.
�If we could take <st1:place w:st="on">Hyde Park</st1:place> and we could help
make more Hyde Parks around the country, I think we would be a much stronger
country.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Over all, the neighborhood is
liberal�Jesse Jackson says that the area has been a nexus of �social activism
and also progressive, multiracial, multicultural politics for as long as I�ve
been here, since 1964��and that quality has made it an occasional target for
conservative disdain. An article in <i>The Weekly Standard</i> observed that
Obama�s neighbors looked �like NPR announcers.� And yet there are complexities
within liberal <st1:place w:st="on">Hyde Park</st1:place>�especially in the
black community�that have played a role in Obama�s evolving political life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Running in 1996 from the South Side,
Obama won a seat in the Illinois State Senate, but three years later, when he
tried to take on Bobby Rush, a four-term Democratic incumbent in the House of
Representatives, Obama got a lesson in Chicago politics. The First
Congressional District included not only Hyde Park but far less affluent
neighborhoods like <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Englewood</st1:place></st1:City>
and Woodlawn. <span class=GramE>Rush, a former leader of the Black Panthers in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>, made easy work
of Obama.</span> Jesse Jackson said that Rush �was and is an icon in the
civil-rights movement� in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>
and had established himself, first on the City Council and then in Congress.
�So this relatively new guy, moving on him, didn�t sit well,� said Jackson, who
supported Rush. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Rush did not hesitate to mock
Obama as inauthentic�and, by inference, insufficiently black. �He went to
Harvard and became an educated fool,� Rush told the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City> <i>Reader</i> during the campaign.
�Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he
knows all about it.� State Senator Donne Trotter, who was also vying for Rush�s
seat, told the same reporter that �Barack is viewed in part to be the white man
in blackface in our community. You have only to look at his supporters. Who
pushed him to get where he is so fast? It�s these individuals in <st1:place
w:st="on">Hyde Park</st1:place>, who don�t always have the best interest of the
community in mind.� Rush�s tactics were brutal, and they were effective: Obama
lost the primary by thirty points.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�I was completely mortified and
humiliated,� Obama told me while he was still only considering a Presidential
run. �The biggest problem in politics is the fear of loss. It�s a very public
thing, which most people don�t have to go through. Obviously, the flip side of
publicity and hype is that, when you fall, folks are right there, snapping
away.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>An essential part of what revived
Obama�s political prospects was a Hyde Park-centered circle of younger black
businesspeople who held him close, advised him, and helped to support his
future campaigns. The circle includes John Rogers, Jr., who knew Michelle
Obama�s brother, Craig, when they played basketball at Princeton; Valerie
Jarrett, the former board chairman of the Chicago Stock Exchange and a close
adviser; and Marty Nesbitt, the president of the Parking Spot, a major
parking-lot company.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�We all have dinner together, we
take vacations together, play golf and basketball together, our kids go to
school together,� Nesbitt told me. It is a circle linked in the way of boomer
and post-boomer American �lites: intersecting paths at top colleges and
professional schools; crisscrossing wires of mutual professions, friends,
charities, Little League teams. Nesbitt�s wife, Anita Blanchard, is an
obstetrician who delivered Obama�s two daughters. Michelle Obama worked for
Jarrett. And so on. The business friends saw in Obama the kind of intelligent,
idealistic, yet moderate politician who represented them in a way that the
older generation of <st1:place w:st="on">Hyde Park</st1:place> leaders no
longer could. They introduced Obama to the Commercial Club crowd downtown, to
more friends of means beyond <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>.
This was part of what Obama was talking about when he referred to �the Joshua
generation��the successful, talented, networking, and, in many cases,
idealistic daughters and sons who benefitted from struggles that they could not
have known firsthand.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In 2004, Obama won a seat in the
U.S. Senate. By the time he published his second book, �The Audacity of Hope,�
two years later, he�d been a sensation as the keynote speaker at the Democratic
Convention and sparked talk of a Presidential run. �Audacity� is a more conventional
and careful book than �Dreams from My Father.� It is a largely programmatic
text, a reasoned manifesto rather than a memoir, but it does manage to reveal
that Obama�s sense of identity had broadened and found its level; he presents
himself as a mature man settled on a sense of mission. He writes that he has
known the slights experienced by any black man in America�the couple who toss
him the keys outside a restaurant, thinking that he is the valet; the police
car that pulls him over for no reason�and is under no illusion that a
�post-racial� world is imminent. And yet he also sees the profound <span
class=SpellE>Americanness</span> of his complex origins, even their political
potency.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�As the child of a black man and a white woman,�
he writes, �I�ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis
of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.� His was not a typical
African-American identity or experience, but it described someone who could
conceive of becoming President of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>4 </span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Despite the small number
of African-Americans holding office since Reconstruction in districts and
states where blacks were not in a majority, there has always been talk�at times
derisive or farcical; at times quixotic, even messianic�of a black President.
As early as 1904, George Edwin Taylor, a newspaperman born in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Arkansas</st1:place></st1:State>, accepted the nomination of the
all-black National Liberty Party to run, but even much later in the century the
prospect of a black Presidency was almost always a discussion held in the
spirit of dreaming. �We�d wonder, <span class=GramE>How</span> long?� Martin
Luther King�s press secretary in Chicago, Don Rose, recalled in an echo of the
old movement chant, �How long? Not long!� In 1967, members of the National
Conference for New Politics tried to persuade King to run on a national ticket
with Benjamin Spock. King refused, knowing that he would never win and might
damage his reputation in the process. Since then, a number of black men and
women have run, but none with serious prospects of winning and a few for purely
symbolic reasons: among them were the comedian and writer Dick Gregory and the
Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver, in 1968; the Brooklyn
congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, in 1972; King�s follower Jesse Jackson, in 1984
and 1988; the conservative activist and former diplomat Alan Keyes, in 1996 and
2000; and Al <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span> and Carol Moseley Braun, in
2004. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Some of those candidacies had
concrete results�Chisholm introduced the reality of a viable black candidate; <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City> won a total of
fourteen primaries and caucuses in his two runs for the Democratic
nomination�yet in the early twenty-first century few blacks believed that a
black candidate would attract enough white votes to win the office.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The realm of popular culture,
meanwhile, provided a shifting register of the attendant yearnings and
anxieties. In Irving Wallace�s Johnson-era best-seller, �The Man,� Douglass <span
class=SpellE>Dilman</span>, a black senator from the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>,
becomes President after the incumbent, the Speaker of the House, and the
Vice-President die. <span class=SpellE>Dilman</span> is full of self-doubt (�I
am a black man, not yet qualified for human being, let alone for President�);
he gets impeached and eventually wins acquittal by a single vote. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In the seventies, Richard Pryor,
when he was hosting a variety show on network television, took on the subject
as a matter of comic flight: once a black man was in office, would he be loyal
to his race or to his country? Elected the fortieth President of the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
President Pryor opens his first press conference calmly and with only a hint of
racial pride. Before long, though, he allows that he will consider appointing
the Black Panther leader Huey Newton as director of the <span class=SpellE>F.B.I</span>.
(�He knows the ins and outs of the <span class=SpellE>F.B.I</span>., if anybody
knows�) and intends to get more black quarterbacks and coaches into the <span
class=SpellE>N.F.L</span>. It�s the same gag about black power and white
anxiety that�s at the center of �Putney Swope,� the 1969 Robert Downey, Sr.,
film, in which a seemingly mild-mannered black advertising executive is elected
to chair the board of a white-run firm, whereupon he throws out all but one
token white guy, replaces the rest with militant blacks, and renames the firm
Truth and Soul, Inc.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Before the country could realize
a black Presidency, it seems, popular culture conceived it�first as comedy,
then as commonplace. Morgan Freeman, as President Tom Beck, prepares the world
for an all-destroying comet in �Deep Impact�; in �24,� President David Palmer,
played by Dennis <span class=SpellE>Haysbert</span>, wards off nuclear
attack�and after he is killed, his brother becomes President. In <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:City>�s imaginings,
over the past decade, a black President is no longer a fantastical premise;
it�s an incidental plot point, a casting choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In 2006, David Axelrod, a
former political reporter for the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>
<i>Tribune</i> who had become a political strategist and helped run Obama�s
Senate campaign, began dropping hints around town. He told friends that, while
�usually the politician chooses the moment, sometimes the moment chooses the
politician.� John Lewis, the Georgia congressman, told me how he had brought
Obama to Atlanta three years ago for an event celebrating his sixty-fifth
birthday, and, as they walked the streets together, blacks and whites would
come up to Obama and tell him to run. �And when I introduced him that night,�
Lewis went on, �I said that one day this man would be President of the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.�
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In November of 2006, at the
offices of a <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State>
law firm, Obama held one of a series of secret brainstorming sessions about his
chances. He had been touring the country, promoting �The Audacity of Hope,�
and, at each stop, he�d received encouragement. But could he overcome the
charge of inexperience? Could he challenge the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City> machine? After a while, according to
the <i>Times,</i> Broderick Johnson, a prominent D.C. lawyer and lobbyist,
asked, �What about race?� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama replied, �I believe <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> is
ready,� and little more was said on the subject. Obama could not run a campaign
like Jackson�s, which had relied heavily on a black base and sought a �rainbow
coalition� of left-leaning ethnics, gays, and union members; instead, he would
aim at a notionally limitless coalition organized around a center-left
politics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�I don�t think Barack�s candidacy
was like any other candidacy,� Axelrod said. �He was the first African-American
to come along as a legitimate contender whose candidacy was viewed in the
broadest terms.� In his Senate race, Obama had campaigned hard and successfully
in southern-Illinois towns nearer to <st1:City w:st="on">Little Rock</st1:City>
than to <st1:City w:st="on">Chicago</st1:City>, and in white areas of northwest
<st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City> where
Harold Washington had been booed in 1983, when he first ran for mayor. �Barack
would come back from these white towns and say, �They�re just like my
grandparents from <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:State>,�
� Axelrod said. �That�s one of his gifts: there is no room he walks into where
he doesn�t feel comfortable and make the people feel that way. It�s both his
personality and his background�one contributes to the other. There�s no doubt
that being biracial contributes to a sense that he doesn�t compartmentalize
people by race or ethnicity or background.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Even black leaders who were
initially wary of him came to recognize his advantages. �His background
helped,� Al <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span> said. �He had a primary
understanding of peoples that we may not have had. He could meet with me and
then with a representative from <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:State>
and understand the nuances as well as the content of both conversations.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>On January 21, 2007, Obama
attended the <span class=SpellE>N.F.C</span>. championship game between the
Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints, at Soldier Field, in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>. Invited to the suite of Linda
Johnson Rice, the chairman and C.E.O. of <i>Ebony</i>, Obama mingled with other
guests, including Mark <span class=SpellE>Morial</span>. Obama admitted that he
was thinking about running for President�by then an open secret�and, when <span
class=SpellE>Morial</span> asked him what his plan was, Obama said that he had
to win the caucus in Iowa, an almost entirely white state. �If I do that, I�m
credible,� he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Three weeks later, on the steps
of the Old State Capitol building in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Springfield</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">Illinois</st1:State></st1:place>, where Abraham Lincoln began
his 1858 Senate campaign, Obama announced his candidacy, admitting to �a
certain audacity� in his venture. He hardly mentioned race in his speech except
in the context of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lincoln</st1:place></st1:City>
and his struggle to unite a divided nation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Axelrod, who had been the successful
strategist for black mayoral candidates in <st1:City w:st="on">Detroit</st1:City>,
<st1:City w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Washington</st1:State>,
D.C., and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cleveland</st1:place></st1:City>,
became Obama�s chief strategist. Most crucial, Axelrod had been the guiding
hand for <span class=SpellE>Deval</span> Patrick, who grew up in the <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Robert</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Taylor</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Homes</st1:PlaceName> housing projects, on the South
Side of Chicago, and who, in 2006, won election as the first African-American
governor of <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Massachusetts</st1:place></st1:State>.
Axelrod was not a believer in the modish talk of �post-racial� politics, but he
was convinced that times had changed��barriers were breaking down.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In a gesture that <span
class=SpellE>signalled</span> that Obama was going to be a cautious and highly
disciplined candidate, not least on race, he and his advisers decided to
disinvite Jeremiah Wright, his friend and pastor at the Trinity United Church
of Christ, on the South Side, from delivering the invocation. Wright is a
pivotal character in �Dreams from My Father,� a welcoming elder who exerted a
powerful spiritual influence over Obama. He�d been essential to Obama�s
education in Christianity, in social issues, in race, and in the ways of the
South Side. Although few people knew yet about Wright�s penchant for incendiary
rhetoric in his sermons, he had already been quoted in the press in ways that
Axelrod and Obama knew might alienate voters in, say, Ames, Iowa, or
Manchester, New Hampshire. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Curiously, Obama�s initial
support did not come from African-Americans. There were obstacles, especially,
in the black establishment. �Barack came to my kitchen,� <st1:City w:st="on">Vernon</st1:City>
Jordan, an attorney who had been president of the National Urban League and
became a close adviser and friend to the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clintons</st1:place></st1:City>,
said. �My wife, Ann, and I gave him his first fund-raiser in D.C. when he ran
for the Senate. He came to my house, and we had this long four-hour dinner, and
I said, �Barack, I am an old Negro who believes that to everything there is a
season�and I don�t think this is your season.� I was so wrong. Anyway, I said,
�If you do run, as I think you will, I will be with Hillary. I am too old to
trade friendship for race. But, if you win, I will be with you.� � <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In the early days of the primary
campaign, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City>
led Obama among blacks by more than twenty points. �They didn�t know him, a),
and, b), they thought it was a long shot,� Jesse Jackson said. �Black voters
are comparatively conservative and practical.� In 1984, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City> had struggled to get support from
African-Americans who didn�t think he had a chance. �Most of my relationships
and labor allies went with [Walter] Mondale,� he said. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>With some exceptions, most
civil-rights-era leaders and politicians, including John Lewis and Andrew
Young, were lining up behind <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City>�out
of loyalty and a belief that she would win. Lewis, for one, could not imagine
himself spurning a <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City>.
In August, 1998, after Bill Clinton went on television to explain his
relationship with Monica Lewinsky�an unprecedented humiliation�Lewis invited
him to Union Chapel on Martha�s Vineyard, to commemorate the thirty-fifth
anniversary of the March on Washington. �He didn�t want to come, but I
convinced him,� Lewis told me. �And, when the time came, I got up to introduce
him and said, �Mr. President, I was with you in the beginning and I will be
with you in the end.� We both cried. . . . How could I abandon a friend like
that?� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a
co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a leader of the
1965 march from <st1:City w:st="on">Selma</st1:City> to <st1:City w:st="on">Montgomery</st1:City>,
told an audience in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:City>
in January, 2007, that �a slave mentality� still haunted those
African-Americans who <span class=SpellE>counselled</span> Obama to wait his
turn. He compared those who discouraged Obama to the white ministers in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Birmingham</st1:place></st1:City> who told
Martin Luther King a half century ago that the time was not ripe for civil
dissent. �Martin said the people who were saying �later� were really saying
�never,� � Lowery said. �The time to do right is always right now.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The dilemma was plain. �These
were people who knew Bill and Hillary and thought well of them and couldn�t
quite believe this young guy with a foreign name had a chance to get elected,�
the civil-rights activist Julian Bond said. �After two <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City> campaigns, after Al <span
class=SpellE>Sharpton�s</span> campaign, after Shirley Chisholm, it seemed that
these symbolic races hadn�t delivered much. The promise had been that these
candidates would extract some kind of benefits from the winners and the black
cause would be advanced. That turned out to be less true than they had hoped.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama was disappointed that black
leaders did not rally to him in greater numbers, but in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iowa</st1:place></st1:State> he was engaged in a much more immediate
project�to prove himself capable of winning white votes. And, as he campaigned
in the state, his appeal was less like Jesse Jackson�s in 1984 and more like
Gary Hart�s. His earliest support came from what strategists call
�better-educated, upper-status whites,� mainly college-educated, younger people
who appreciated his outspoken opposition to the invasion of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> when he
was still a state senator. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama was extremely careful about
racial politics. He spoke out on a prolonged and ugly racial conflict in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Jena</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Louisiana</st1:State></st1:place>,
but did not join a march. �If I were a candidate, I�d be all over <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jena</st1:place></st1:City>,� Jesse Jackson said
at the time. According to a <st1:State w:st="on">South Carolina</st1:State>
paper, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City>
thought that Obama, in his restraint, was �acting like he�s white.� But <span
class=SpellE>Sharpton</span>, who led demonstrations in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Jena</st1:place></st1:City>, said that he came to understand Obama�s
thinking. �There are different traditions in the African-American community,
different styles,� <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span> said. �Obama doesn�t come
out of the Martin Luther King or Jesse Jackson tradition of activists. Obama
comes from the mainstream electoral tradition, the Doug Wilder tradition.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>On January 3, 2008, Obama won <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iowa</st1:place></st1:State>. His victory speech
that night was emblematic of the subtle way that he would treat race:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:.25in;line-height:15.6pt;background:white'><span class=line1><span
lang=EN style='font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>You know, they said this
day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this
country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a
common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history,
you have done what the cynics said we couldn�t do. . . . We are one people. And
our time for change has come. </span></span><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>An astonishing rhetorical move:
Obama calls on the familiar cadences and syntax of the black church. He
gestures toward what everyone is thinking about�the launching of a campaign
that could lead to the first African-American President. �This was the <span
class=GramE>moment when we tore down barriers that have</span> divided us for
too long,� he says. �When we rallied people of all��wait for it��parties and
ages.� The displacement is deft and effective. We know that he means racial barriers�we
can <i>feel</i> it�but the invocation is more powerful for being unspoken. The
key pronoun is always �we,� or �us.� The historical fight for equal rights
comes only at the end of a peroration on national purpose: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:.25in;line-height:15.6pt;background:white'><span class=line1><span
lang=EN style='font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Hope is what led a band of
colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to
free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit
at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through <st1:City w:st="on">Selma</st1:City>
and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Montgomery</st1:place></st1:City>
for freedom�s <span class=GramE>cause</span>. Hope�hope is what led me here
today.</span></span><span class=break><span lang=EN style='font-size:9.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'> </span></span><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The civil-rights struggle is
deftly recast in terms not of national guilt but of national progress: the rise
of the Joshua generation. What the African-American left once referred to as
the �black freedom struggle� becomes, in Obama�s terms, an American freedom
struggle. African-Americans watched Obama�s victory speech in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Des Moines</st1:place></st1:City> with a sense of wonder. Obama
proved that he had a chance, and the black vote started to migrate steadily in
his direction. A coalition in the Democratic Party, between antiwar whites and
blacks�perhaps something even wider than that�was now conceivable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�<st1:State w:st="on">Iowa</st1:State>
was amazing and I was there,� Cliff Kelly, a host on <span class=SpellE>WVON</span>,
<st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>�s
leading black talk-radio station, said, laughing. �When Barack came out onstage
with his wife and two gorgeous daughters, all of them looking like they were
out of central casting, there were only five black people there in the room. <span
class=GramE>Them and me.�</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Until that moment, how many
African-Americans�how many Americans�allowed <span class=GramE>themselves</span>
to believe that a black President was possible? <span class=GramE>Had the world
really changed that much?</span> Still, some African-American politicians
believed that Hillary Clinton�s win, five days later, in <st1:State w:st="on">New
Hampshire</st1:State> was proof that <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iowa</st1:place></st1:State>
was little more than a freakish victory in a caucus state. In <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">South Carolina</st1:place></st1:State>, a black state senator,
Robert Ford, told a reporter that Obama�s chances of getting the nomination
were �slim,� and if he were to head the Democratic ticket �we�d lose the House
and the Senate and the governors and everything. I�m a gambling man. I love
Obama, but I�m not going to kill myself.� Just three days before the vote, a
Mason-Dixon poll indicated that, in the race against Clinton and John Edwards,
Obama would get only ten per cent of the white vote.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama won overwhelmingly in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">South Carolina</st1:place></st1:State>, taking about a quarter of
the white vote and nearly all the black vote. African-American leaders started
to reconsider their loyalties as their constituencies abandoned the <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clintons</st1:place></st1:City>. Compounding the
trend, Bill Clinton offended some blacks by suggesting that Obama�s victory in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">South Carolina</st1:place></st1:State> was like
Jesse Jackson�s. �I had an executive session with myself,� John Lewis recalled.
He phoned Bill and Hillary Clinton to tell them that he loved them but now he
was going with Barack Obama. �I realized that I was on the wrong side of
history,� he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>5 </span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Don Rose, a Chicago
political strategist who is close to David Axelrod, is sure that the Obama
campaign intended to deal with race the way his client Jane Byrne dealt with
gender in her campaign for mayor, in 1979. �We never once said anything about
her being a woman,� Rose said. �I had her dress as plainly as possible. She had
bad hair, which had been dyed and dried over a lifetime, and she sometimes had
it fixed twice a day. We had her wear a dowdy wig to look as plain as possible.
We discouraged feminist organizations from endorsing her. I didn�t want the
issue of her being a woman to come up in the least. We knew that women who
would identify with her, the gender-centric vote, would come our way without
anyone raising it. You don�t have to highlight what�s already obvious.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>It was not by accident that <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City>, <span
class=SpellE>Sharpton</span>, and other potentially polarizing figures were
seen so rarely on platforms with Obama during the campaign. �The rule was: no
radioactive blacks,� Rose said. �Harold Ford, fine. <span class=GramE>Jesse
Jackson, Jr., fine.</span> But Jesse, Sr., and Al <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span>,
better not.� Rose noted that Obama rarely referred directly to his race in his
stump speeches. �When Barack came back from <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>
and he was using that line about how he didn�t look like all the other
Presidents on American currency, his numbers went down,� Rose said. �He got
whacked and the campaign noticed. You don�t raise it, that�s the axiom, and you
let it work. The less <span class=GramE>said,</span> the better.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
class=SpellE><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Sharpton</span></span><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>, for one, says that he
understood that Obama was �trying to build a bipartisan, ecumenical coalition�
and did not try to force himself on Obama. In fact, when <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span>
first encountered him, Obama was running for the Senate. They met before
appearing at a session of the black caucus of the Democratic National Committee
and divided up their rhetorical responsibilities. Obama said that he was making
a straight policy speech that night, and <span class=SpellE>Sharpton</span>
replied, �Tomorrow night, I�ll take care of the brothers and sisters.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Once the Presidential campaign
accelerated, Obama explicitly addressed the subject of race mainly when it was
demanded of him. While he was campaigning at a town meeting in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Carson City</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Nevada</st1:State></st1:place>,
a woman in her late sixties named Christy <span class=SpellE>Tews</span> told
him that she wanted to vote for a Democrat who would win in November.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Let�s get down to brass tacks
here,� she said. �We have never elected a black man in our country.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Yes, that�s a good point,� Obama
said, wryly. �I�ve noticed that.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Then Obama normalized the
question, somehow, and thus normalized the prospects of his winning. �Will
there be some folks who probably don�t vote for me because I�m black?� he said
to <span class=SpellE>Tews</span>. �Of course, just like there�d be some people
who won�t vote for Hillary because she�s a woman or wouldn�t vote for John
Edwards because they don�t like his accent. But the question is<span
class=GramE>,</span> can we get a majority of the American people to give us a
fair hearing?�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>A fair hearing became far more
difficult with the release, in March, of videotapes of Jeremiah Wright in full
denunciatory mode: �Not God bless <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>! <span class=GramE>God damn
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>!�</span>
Over and over they played. The <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City>
campaign wondered how its own opposition-research operation had failed to
uncover the tapes earlier, when, they told themselves, they could have put a
quick end to the Obama campaign.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>There was, of course, a context
to �God damn <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>.�
Like Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, who fought the rise of Jim Crow laws after
Reconstruction and told his black parishioners that they had every right to
believe that God was a Negro, Wright saw himself as�and Obama understood him to
be�an inheritor of the prophetic tradition, not an <span class=SpellE>accommodationist</span>,
and hardly a politician. His jeremiads were meant to rouse, to accuse, <span
class=GramE>to</span> shake off dejection. At times, he called on the familiar
metaphor of American blacks as modern-day equivalents of the ancient Hebrews, a
people marked by terrible suffering and displacement. Wright was part of a
tradition well known to millions of churchgoing African-Americans. But that
would never be explained adequately on cable television. The campaign knew that
voters would hear those videotapes and be encouraged to wonder about Obama�s
associations and allegiances. Underneath his welcoming demeanor, was he like a
cartoon version of Wright, full of condemnation and loyal only to his race?
Would he bring the militants to the White House like the executive in �Putney
Swope�?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>According to Axelrod, Obama had
wanted to give a speech about race in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iowa</st1:place></st1:State>,
�but the staff said it seemed like a non sequitur.� With the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City> campaign making good use of the
Wright affair, however, Obama had to act. It was plain that damage control, in
the form of sound bites and surrogate interviews, would not work. Obama decided
to deliver a major address on race, to be called �A More Perfect Union,� on
March 18th, at the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">National</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Constitution</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Center</st1:PlaceType>,
in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:City>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>For three days, Obama campaigned
by day and then dictated and wrote the speech until the early-morning hours. �I
slept well, because I knew that Barack knew <i>exactly</i> what he wanted to
say,� Axelrod recalled. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In his speech, Obama began by
trying to broaden the country�s understanding of the Reverend Wright�s
activities as pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ: he was a former
marine, he said, who had built a large and passionate ministry that represented
�the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gangbanger.�
Obama disagreed with Wright�s most inflammatory and indefensible remarks, which
represented �a profoundly distorted view of this country.� In his view,
despair, the Biblically unforgivable sin, was at the heart of Wright�s mistake.
But he refused to condemn him outright: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:.25in;line-height:15.6pt;background:white'><span class=line1><span
lang=EN style='font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>I can no more disown him
than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my
white grandmother�a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and
again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world,
but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the
street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic
stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a
part of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
this country that I love.</span></span><span class=break><span lang=EN
style='font-size:9.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> </span></span><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama was in the midst of a
high-stakes rhetorical balancing act. He empathized not only with his
embittered preacher but also with the embittered white workers who have seen
�their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor�
and cannot understand why their children might be bused across town or why a
person of color has a leg up through affirmative action �because of an
injustice that they themselves never committed.� Obama <span class=SpellE>signalled</span>
to all sides that he heard them, that he �got it.� A white Southerner, even
Bill Clinton, could not dare to do that in a speech on race, and Jesse Jackson,
whose tradition had been more about the rhetoric of grievances and recompense,
never <i>would</i>. Obama�s ability to negotiate among the sharply disparate
perspectives of his fellow-citizens was at the heart of his political success.
Perhaps when people speak of Obama�s �distance,� they mean just this capacity
to inhabit different points of view�a mastery that can seem more
anthropological than political. Obama allowed that black anger about past and
present wrongs was counterproductive; he also pointed to the way that American
politics had been shaped since the Nixon era by the exploitation of white anger
in the South and elsewhere. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Just as important as the message
was the tone of the messenger. Obama�s distinctively cool personality continued
to serve him and his candidacy. The civil-rights-era activist Bob Moses told
me, �His confidence in himself�and his peacefulness with himself�came through
in a way that can�t be faked. You are under too much pressure to actually adopt
a persona. You can�t do it under that pressure and not have it blown away.
People said he couldn�t afford to be the angry black candidate, but the point
is that he is not angry. If he were angry, it would have come out.� Indeed, in
the sixties, Moses, as he led voter-registration drives in Mississippi, was
himself known for those same qualities�his intelligence and even temper.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�The speech helped stanch a real
frenzy,� Axelrod said. �Barack turned a moment of great vulnerability into a
moment of triumph. He said, �I may lose, but I will have done something
valuable.� He was utterly calm while everyone was freaking out. He said,
�Either they will accept it or they won�t and I won�t be President.� It was
probably the most important moment of the whole campaign.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Studs <span class=SpellE>Terkel</span>,
who compiled oral histories about race and the Depression and was, at
ninety-six, a <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>
institution, spoke to me a week before his death. <span class=SpellE>Terkel</span>
said that Obama�s political guile under pressure reminded him of Gene Tunney,
the heavyweight champion of the mid-nineteen-twenties, who used craft, more
than brawn, to defeat Jack Dempsey twice. �The guys on the street, the
mechanics and shoe clerks, saw Tunney as an intellectual, but he won,� <span
class=SpellE>Terkel</span> said. �Obama is like that. He�s one cool fighter.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>The speech in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:City> did more than change the
subject. It was daring in its ambition, as it not only contextualized the
Reverend Wright�at least, for those who were willing to be persuaded�but also
posed Obama himself as the break with history, the focal point of a new era,
embracing America itself for all its tribes, for all its historical enmities
and possibilities. In effect, it congratulated the country for getting behind
him. Wright, Jackson�they were leaders of the old vanguard. Obama would lead
the new vanguard, the Joshua generation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>6</span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama has proved to be
not only a skilled campaigner but a lucky one�a requirement for victory. In
July, good fortune, in the person of Jesse Jackson, handed him an incident that
would provide him some useful distance from the past. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>According to black leaders who
know both men well, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City>
resented that a younger, more moderate politician, a man with no experience of
the civil-rights struggle and with an unusual entry into African-American life,
was heading toward the office that he had twice failed to reach. That month, <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City> was preparing to
appear on Fox television when he was recorded on an open mike criticizing Obama
for his �faith-based� comments about the need in some black families for
greater personal responsibility. Speaking sotto voce to another guest, Jackson
also said that Obama had been �talking down to black people.� He made a slicing
gesture with his hand and said, �I <span class=SpellE>wanna</span> cut his nuts
out.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama�s talk about responsibility
was the kind of thing that black preachers across the country spoke of on
Sunday mornings. What seemed to irritate Jackson was the double discourse, the
way that Obama�s rhetoric was, by design, being overheard by white audiences
that might understand it not as brotherly sympathy but, rather, as lofty
reproach.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Barack would go to various
groups and spell out public policy,� <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City>
told me. �He�d go to Latino groups and the conversation would be about the road
to citizenship and immigration policy. He�d go to women and talk about women�s
rights, Roe v. Wade. But he�d gone to several black groups, talking about
responsibility, which is an important virtue that should be broadly applied,
but, given our crisis, we need government policy, too. African-Americans are
No. 1 in voting for him, because he excited people. But we�re also No. 1 in
infant mortality, No. 1 in shortness of life expectancy, No. 1 in homicide
victims.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Fox played the tape on the air,
and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City> had
to apologize. This, in turn, allowed Obama to accept the apology. <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place></st1:City> looked petty and
jealous, Obama looked magnanimous. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�I was shocked by the language,
but I knew Jesse had the feeling that Obama played to white Americans by
criticizing black Americans, for not doing enough to help ourselves,� Julian
Bond told me. �Whether he intended it, I don�t know, but I am sure Jesse
provided Obama that sort of Sister <span class=SpellE>Souljah</span> moment.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Even many of Obama�s early critics acquired a
grudging respect for his strategic sense. The broadcaster and author <span
class=SpellE>Tavis</span> Smiley, who has a huge African-American audience, had
persistently criticized Obama for �pivoting� on issues like gun control and the
death penalty and had warned him against �selling his soul or surrendering his
soul� to get elected. And yet, Smiley told me, �Each time Obama and I talked
during the campaign, maybe a half-dozen times on the phone, we aired our
positions and differences, but it always ended with him saying, �<span
class=SpellE>Tavis</span>, I <span class=SpellE>gotta</span> do what I <span
class=SpellE>gotta</span> do and I respect the fact that you have to do what
you have to.� We confirm our love for each other and then we hang up.� Obama
did not represent the prophetic tradition: he was not Frederick Douglass or
Bishop Turner, Martin or Malcolm. He was a pragmatist, a politician.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>7 </span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In 1995, Colin Powell,
after his reputation was burnished by the first Gulf War�and long before his
reputation was tarnished by the second�was uniquely positioned to become the
first African-American President. His reputation as a soldier and as an adviser
to Presidents had been unimpeachable, and his life story, as he described it in
his autobiography, �My American Journey,� was no less appealing, if less
tortured, than Obama�s in �Dreams from My Father.� Powell put himself forward
in the old-fashioned way: the man of accomplishment �who just happens to be
black.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>For a few weeks, as his book sat
atop the best-seller list, Powell discussed a run for the 1996 Republican
nomination with his family and his inner circle of aides and friends. Bill
Clinton, political tacticians told them, lacked Powell�s particular strengths:
his maturity, his solidity in foreign affairs; in a center-right country, the
scenario went, Powell might beat the incumbent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Some in my family, in my circle
of acquaintances, were concerned that, as a black person running for office,
you�re probably at greater personal risk than you might be if you were a white
person,� Powell told me. �But I�ve been at risk many times in my life, and I�ve
been shot at, even.� Powell thought about the question for a few weeks and
then, he said, he realized, �What are you doing? This is not you. It had
nothing to do with race. It had to do with who I am, a professional soldier,
who really has no instinct or gut passion for political life. The determining
factor was I never woke up a single morning saying, �Gee, I want to go to <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iowa</st1:place></st1:State>.� It was that
simple. So the race thing was there, and I would�ve been the first prominent
African-American candidate, but the reality is that the whole family, but
especially me, had to look in the mirror and say, �Is this what you really
think you would be good at? And do you really want to do it?� And the answer
was no.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Since leaving the Administration
of George W. Bush, in 2005, after serving as Secretary of State, Powell has
showed his political hand with care, sometimes through background interviews
with favored journalists, sometimes through former aides. But in the past year
he could hardly avoid mention of the Presidential race. Powell said that he had
watched the campaign closely and met with both Obama and John McCain within a
week of each other, in June. �I told them the concerns I had with each of their
campaigns,� Powell recalled, �and I told them what I liked about them. I said,
�I�m going to be watching.� � <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Over the summer, Powell saw the
campaign unfold and, increasingly, he was dismayed by the ugly rhetoric on the
Republican side. �It wasn�t just John,� Powell said. �Frankly, very often it
wasn�t John; it was some sheriff in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:State>
introducing�I can�t remember who the guy was introducing, whether it was
Governor <span class=SpellE>Palin</span> or John�who said, �Barack <i>Hussein</i>
Obama.� That�s all code words. I know what he�s saying: he�s a Muslim, and he�s
black.� Powell chose to accept a standing invitation from Tom Brokaw and, on
October 19th, he appeared on �Meet the Press.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�John knew what my concerns were
with respect to the Party and with respect to continuing, without much change,
the policies of the Administration,� Powell said. His endorsement of
Obama�precise, eloquent�came as no surprise to McCain. �He knew all of my
concerns,� Powell said. The endorsement was, for some conservatives, like
Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan�s last chief of staff, �the <i>Good
Housekeeping</i> seal of approval.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>In the days that followed, the
calls, letters, and e-mails that Powell received were mostly positive. The
Pakistanis in his local supermarket appreciated what he had to say about the
use of �Arab� or �Muslim� as a pejorative. Some critics said that his
endorsement of Obama was an act of �disloyalty and dishonor.� Rush Limbaugh was
only the loudest of the right-wing voices to denounce him. Limbaugh felt no
compunction about saying that Powell�s only reason for endorsing Obama was
race. �The Rush Limbaugh attacks and other attacks from the far right generate
a lot of heat but not much light,� Powell said. The racist letters he�s
received are generally unsigned and with no return address. �But I�ve faced
this in just about everything I�ve ever done in my public life,� Powell said.
�It�s there in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
and it can�t be denied that there are people like this.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Powell said that Obama had run a
completely new kind of campaign when it came to race. �Shirley [Chisholm] was a
wonderful woman, and I admire Jesse [Jackson] and all of my other friends in
the black community,� he said, �but I think Obama should not be just�well,
�They were black, and he�s black, therefore they�re his predecessor.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Here�s the difference in a
nutshell, and it�s an expression that I�ve used throughout my career�first
black national-security adviser, first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
first black Secretary of State. What Obama did, he�s run as an American who is
black, not as a black American. There�s a difference. People would say to me,
�Gee, it�s great to be the black Secretary of State,� and I would blink and
laugh and say, �<span class=GramE>Is</span> there a white one somewhere? I am
the Secretary of State, who happens to be black.� Make sure you understand
where you put that descriptor, because it makes a difference. And I faced that
throughout my career. You know, �You�re the best black lieutenant I�ve ever
seen.� �Thank you very much, sir, but I want to be the best lieutenant you�ve
ever seen, not the best black lieutenant you�ve ever seen.� Obama has not
shrunk from his heritage, his culture, his background, and the fact that he�s
black, as other blacks have. He ran honestly on the basis of <span class=GramE>who</span>
he is and what he is and his background, which is a fascinating background, but
he didn�t run just to appeal to black people or to say a black person could do
it. He�s running as an American.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>I asked Powell if Obama�s election would signal
the rise of a �post-racial� period in American history. �No!� he said. �It just
means that we have moved farther along the continuum that the Founding Fathers
laid out for us two hundred and thirty-odd years ago. With each passing year,
with each passing generation, with each passing figure, we move closer and
closer to what <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>
can be. But, no matter what happens in the case of Senator Obama, there are
still a lot of black kids who don�t see that dream there for them.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>8 </span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>A few weeks before
Election Day, as Obama widened his lead over McCain, I visited <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:City>. The last time I was there, the
city had been underwater. Since then, Katrina had obliterated what remained of
George Bush�s reputation and promised to shadow the Presidential race of 2008. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama had pledged to run a
fifty-state campaign, but even his enormous war chest would not pay for
futility. <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Louisiana</st1:place></st1:State>
is rarely a scene of Presidential campaigning, and the state went for Bush in
2000 and 2004. Nevertheless, African-Americans in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:City>�in <span class=SpellE>Treme</span>,
in Mid-City, in the Lower Ninth�watched Obama�s campaign obsessively. They were
listening to Tom Joyner, on <span class=SpellE>WYLD</span>; Michael <span
class=SpellE>Baisden</span>, on <span class=SpellE>KMEZ</span>; Jamie Foxx, on
Sirius. On <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Canal Street</st1:address></st1:Street>,
venders sold the same Obama T-shirts that I�d seen on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address
w:st="on">125th Street</st1:address></st1:Street> in <st1:place w:st="on">Harlem</st1:place>.
The most popular paired Obama and Martin Luther King. Kids who normally would
be wearing oversized throwback sports jerseys wore Obama shirts instead. There
were Obama signs in the windows of barbershops, seafood and <span class=SpellE>po�boy</span>
joints, and people�s homes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>One night, I went out for a beer
with Wendell Pierce, a New <span class=SpellE>Orleanian</span> who made his
name as an actor playing the homicide cop Bunk Moreland on the HBO series �The
Wire.� Pierce is in his mid-forties. His parents� neighborhood, <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Pontchartrain</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Park</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, was washed away in Katrina, and he
has spent months trying to redevelop the area. Pierce picked me up on <st1:Street
w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Canal Street</st1:address></st1:Street>: he is
built like a fireplug and has a double-bass voice. We drove to Bullet�s, a
working-class bar on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">A. P. <span
class=SpellE>Tureaud</span> Avenue</st1:address></st1:Street>, in the Seventh
Ward. There we met Mike Dauphin, a <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> veteran, who sat at our
table for a long time talking about his childhood in Jim Crow New Orleans,
riding in the back of the bus and going to segregated schools and working at
American Can and U.S. Steel. When Katrina came, he was sheltered first at a
hospice and then, with thousands of others, at the Convention Center, downtown,
�where we had almost no water or food for five days.� He could hardly wait to
vote, and he was talking in the same terms as so many older people around town:
�I never dreamed in my lifetime that I would see a black man as President of
the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
I was a kid growing up under Jim Crow. We couldn�t drink out of the same water
faucet�but now it seems that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has changed.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Yet you also heard from many
people a great wariness, a kind of defense against white self-congratulation or
the impression that somehow Obama�s election would automatically transform the
conditions of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:City>
and the country. In <span class=SpellE>Treme</span>, a neighborhood adjacent to
the French Quarter and arguably the oldest black community in the country, I
met Jerome Smith, a veteran of the Freedom Rides in <st1:State w:st="on">Alabama</st1:State>
and <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mississippi</st1:place></st1:State>.
These days, Smith runs youth programs at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName
w:st="on"><span class=SpellE>Treme</span></st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Community Center</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>. On a sunny fall
afternoon, we sat on the steps of a former funeral home on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address
w:st="on">St. Claude Avenue</st1:address></st1:Street> that was now operating
as the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Backstreet</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Cultural</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Museum</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>,
an apartment-size collection of artifacts from the black bands that played
Mardi <span class=GramE>Gras</span> and second-line parades.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Obama winning the Presidency
breaks a historical rhythm, but it does not mean everything,� Smith said. �His
minister did not lie when he said that the controlling power in this country
was rich white men. Rich white men were responsible for slavery. They are
responsible for unbreakable levels of poverty for African-Americans. Look at
this bailout today, which is all about us bailing out rich white men. And there
are thousands of children from this city who have gone missing from <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Orleans</st1:place></st1:City>. Who will
speak for them? <span class=GramE>Obama?</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�Obama is the recipient of
something, but he did not stand in the Senate after he was elected and say that
there is a significant <i>absence</i> in this chamber, that he was the only
African-American and this is wrong. He is no Martin Luther King, he is no
Fannie Lou <span class=SpellE>Hamer</span>��who helped found the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party, in 1964. �He is a man who can be accommodated by <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but he
is not my hero, because a politician, by nature, has to surrender. Where the
problems that afflict African-Americans are concerned, Obama can�t go for
broke. And the white people�good, decent white people�who voted for him just
can�t understand. They don�t have to walk through the same misery as our
children do.� <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Smith was angry but, as an
activist contemplating a mainstream leader, not entirely misguided. It�s
inevitable that euphoria will fade. The commemorations will fade. And what will
remain is a cresting worldwide recession, wars in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
a crumbling infrastructure, a rickety, unjust health-care system, melting polar
ice caps�to say nothing of the crisis that comes from out of nowhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Colin Powell said that, after a
prolonged period in which American prestige abroad has <span class=GramE>dwindled,</span>
Obama would have a �honeymoon period,� which will give him an opportunity to
�move forward on a number of foreign-policy fronts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�That is also something that will perish or
diminish over time, as he faces problems and crises,� Powell continued. �If the
excitement of the first black President is great, it�ll diminish if he doesn�t
do something about the economy, or the economy <span class=GramE>worsens,</span>
or if we suddenly find ourselves in a crisis. As Joe Biden inarticulately said
the other day, �Something�s coming along.� No one knows what it is. . . . The
next President will be challenged, and how the President responds to that
challenge will be more important than what his race happens to be at that
moment. But, for the initial period of an Obama Presidency, there will be an
excitement, <span class=GramE>an electricity</span> around the world that he
can use.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><b><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>9</span></b><span lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=descender3 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Forty-nine years ago, a
young woman named <span class=SpellE>Charlayne</span> Hunter graduated third in
her class from <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Henry</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">McNeal</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Turner</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">High School</st1:PlaceType>, in those days the most
prestigious high school for African-Americans in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:City>. <span class=SpellE>Charlayne</span>
wanted to be a journalist. The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Georgia</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> had the
strongest journalism program in the state, but the university did not accept
blacks. Segregation was not something that teen-agers thought to battle in
1959, so <span class=SpellE>Charlayne</span> started making other plans,
applying to schools in the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>. Yet
something was happening in the South: sparked by incidents like Rosa <span
class=SpellE>Parks�s</span> historic refusal in <st1:City w:st="on">Montgomery</st1:City>
and the rise of young preachers like Martin Luther King in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:City>, a movement was developing. And so,
at the urging of some black leaders in town, <span class=SpellE>Charlayne</span>
and <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Turner</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">High
School</st1:PlaceType>�s valedictorian, Hamilton Holmes, challenged
segregation at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Georgia</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> by sending in
applications for admission. Their applications were soon rejected. Then a legal
team led by the <span class=SpellE>N.A.A.C.P.�s</span> Constance Baker Motley,
and including such young lawyers as <st1:City w:st="on">Vernon</st1:City> <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Jordan</st1:country-region>, championed their case, and, two years
later, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that <span class=SpellE>Charlayne</span>
Hunter and Hamilton Holmes were indeed qualified for admission to the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Georgia</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> and must be allowed to
matriculate without delay. They started school in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Athens</st1:place></st1:City> in the winter of 1961. For months,
they heard racist taunts as they walked to class. <span class=SpellE>Charlayne</span>
had bricks hurled through her windows. But she and Holmes stayed on and they
studied and made many friends, and their case became yet another landmark of
the civil-rights movement, along with the marches in Selma and Montgomery�and
the church bombings and the beatings, and the murders of <span class=SpellE>Medgar</span>
Evers and Martin Luther King still to come.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Over the past four decades, <span
class=SpellE>Charlayne</span> Hunter-<span class=SpellE>Gault</span>, as she
has been known for many years, has worked at this magazine, at the <i>Times</i>,
for PBS, and for NPR, for which she is now a reporter living in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Johannesburg</st1:place></st1:City>. She is
sixty-six. When it was becoming clear a few weeks ago that Barack Obama was on
his way to winning the Presidency, we had a series of exchanges about the
election. Hunter-<span class=SpellE>Gault</span> was especially impressed by the
young Senator�s calm when the political and personal attacks came; she said
that it reminded her of what her own family, and the families of so many
activists in the civil-rights movement, had instilled in their children as a
code of behavior. �Try as I can, I am unable to separate my civil-rights past
from my present as a journalist because both of my lives converge at this
moment,� she wrote in one note, �because without the movement I wouldn�t be
where I am today, and neither would Barack Obama. But because of the movement I
was not one of those who thought, <span class=GramE>Not</span> in my lifetime,
not least because I had seen and felt the power of young people, with only
their convictions as weapons, tear down the walls of the decades-long system of
segregation. And for the first time since the movement I saw a new generation
of young people fighting in the same way for change that would bring back the
idealism that fuelled our struggles in the streets.� Her sense of triumph,
though, was not without anxiety. �Anyone who lived through the civil-rights
movement with the threats we were exposed to (in my case, mobs outside my
otherwise all-white dormitory shouting �Kill the nigger�), and with the losses
we suffered�Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, Michael <span class=SpellE>Schwerner</span>,
and then the ultimate loss, our leader, Martin Luther King�and now to hear
reports of people in Republican audiences responding to political attacks on
Obama with words like �Kill him�: we would be living on another planet not to
worry for the young husband, father, and new President of the United States.
But, like King, who warned us that �I may not be there with you,� we have to
know that we cannot be prisoners of our fears.�<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Just a few minutes before eleven
last Tuesday night, when Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters walked
out on the stage at Grant Park, and everyone around was screaming, chanting,
and waving flags, the long campaign came to an end. Joy was in the faces of the
people all around me, there was crying and shouting, but Obama seemed to bear <span
class=GramE>a certain</span> gravity, his voice infused not with jubilation but
with a sense of the historical moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>�If there is anyone out there who
still doubts that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our
founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy,
tonight is your answer,� he began.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=noindent1 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-size:
10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>Obama had done it one last time. Having cast
himself in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Selma</st1:place></st1:City>
twenty months ago as one who stood on the �shoulders of giants,� as the leader
of the Joshua generation, he hardly had to mention race. It was the thing
always present, the thing so rarely named. He had simultaneously celebrated
identity and pushed it into the background. �Change has come to <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>,� Obama
declared, and everyone in a park remembered until now as the place where, forty
summers ago, police did outrageous battle with antiwar protesters knew what
change had <span class=GramE>come,</span> and that�how long? <span class=GramE><i>too</i></span>
long�it was about damned time. </span><span class=dingbat1><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>♦</span></span><span
lang=EN style='font-size:10.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h6 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>ILLUSTRATION:
JOHN RITTER, AFTER JAMES <span class=SpellE>ROSENQUIST</span>, �PRESIDENT
ELECT� (1960-61); PHOTOGRAPHS FROM LEFT: STEVE SCHAPIRO, AP, BRUCE
DAVIDSON/MAGNUM, EVE ARNOLD/MAGNUM, <span class=SpellE>PLATON</span><o:p></o:p></span></h6>
<h6 style='background:white'><span lang=EN style='font-family:Arial;color:#9F9F9F;
text-transform:uppercase;mso-ansi-language:EN'><a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/17/081117fa_fact_remnick">www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/17/081117fa_fact_remnick</a><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>� </span><o:p></o:p></span></h6>
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