I missed it.
Whatever that feeling was the Black folk all around the country felt, even good ol' Condoleeza Rice, over the past week - I didn't get my allotted portion of ecstacy!
Whatever it was that pulled those tears down Jesse Jackson's Oprah Winfrey's faces.
Whatever got my mother out the bed at 4 a.m.
Whatever had Harlem looking like a midnight marketplace in Ghana on Independence Day (for real. Who broke out the djembe drums?)...
Whatever it was that I felt was GOING to happen to me without a shadow of a doubt by sheer virtue of being Black once Barack Obama was announced the 44th President of the United States of America did NOT happen, and I'm so mad about it.
I really wanted to scream and cry and jump and shout, but... I missed it.
Damn!
But, alas, Barack was never my Black candidate. I should have known I would be but so happy to have a Black President. I should have known that the elation and giddiness over that would not be something I could hold as my own.
*sigh*
So what of it then?
The change I could believe in with Barack Obama had very little to do with his skin color. As a matter of fact, his skin color was a main reason I avoided getting on his bandwagon early. I did not know much about the senator, and I for darn sure was not going to align myself with him just because he was Black. So I heard Michelle speak after Kucinich dropped. She told me about a man that she loved, and I believed her, and it felt good to believe in love and respect and admiration and partnership again. But I didn't really know Michelle either, and why believe her? Then Edwards dropped. And something about Hillary made me want to burn pantsuits, so I was forced to learn about Barack. I read excerpts from his books. I visited his website. I checked his voting records. I listened to the debates. I prayed. I asked friends. I talked to my parents. Then I started researching McCain... The old man wasn't that horrible. And I'm not that much of a Democrat. (I know... from Kucinich to McCain. What was I could through?) Was I becoming an undecided? Oh the sheer horror!
Then one day at work, a colleague sent me an email. It was a link to a blog written by a man who was providing his opinion on Barack's feelings about faith. And there it was: the moment I started to believe that yes, I could vote for Barack Obama. (I'd already voted for him in the primary, but that was because I did not want to vote for Hillary, and I was pretty sure she'd win NY anyway. I still wasn't sure what I'd do in November. I was still researching the reptilian McCain.)
It was the way I shared his thoughts. In exceprts of "Dreams from my Father" I discovered traces of myself. I found my own confusing navigation and negotiation with white privilege between Barack's lines. I heard my own voice in his as he explained his acceptance of Jesus Christ as an adult. I've been in church all my life, but I think every Christian can admit that there comes a point as an adult where you have to reaffirm your beliefs, and it can't just be because someone else said so: It's what you know for yourself, and Barack articulated that.
Barack's Blackness always came second, perhaps third, in order of importance behind the quintessential necessity for me that Barack be a good person. So regardless of how well-versed I became on the issues, or how much I researched, I felt that he was a good person. I didn't read his entire economic policy, but I have a feeling that a man who doesn't start out with much, accomplishes more than expected, gives back out of a sense of obligation and raises $150 million in a month will find a way to employ the best minds possible to get our country back on the right track. I'm not convinved that we'll ever solve this health care debacle, nor that Barack's plan is how it could be done, but I see the way he looks at Michelle and his daughters, and I feel his pain when he recalls his regret for not being at his mother's side as she died of cancer and how at a critical moment of the campaign, he went to be by his grandmother's side before she died, and I am convinced that this man will find a way to keep the people of America well. I don't know what preconditions may or may not be on the table when he talks to nations with which the U.S. has tense relations, but I know that if Barack Obama were to ever curse me to hell, he'd do it with dignity and compassion, and I might actually enjoy the trip remembering his parting words.
His Blackness!??! It's awesome that a cycle of sameness has been broken, but I don't know what it means to this new millennial Negro that that cycle be broken by a Black man. I was just so pleased to put an end to the tom foolery of unintelligent, aggressive, compulsive, blubbering, buffoonery of the Bush/Cheyney regime that I think for a few days, I forgot Barack was Black. I'm just so glad to have a president with a spine, some scruples and a beautiful mind that I really forgot the Black part.
And it's not that the Black doesn't matter. It does. I guess it just didn't matter as much to me as I thought it would... I thought it should. It's one of those "matters to us, didn't mean much to me" moments that I've experienced throughout my life. I just really did not think this was one of those times.
I'm glad to have a practicing Christian President. HALLELUJAH! All these half-assed "Christian" presidents talking about how "private" of a matter their faith is to them and they're not going to comment on it. Stop hiding and live your faith. Oh, Adam, WHERE ART THOU? Meanwhile, you want to hate on Muslims for being better stewards of their faith in thought, word and deed. How DARE you! God'll make the rocks cry out!
I'm glad to have a young, vibrant, hopeful President. I am a young, vibrant, hopefuly person. And after years of boycotting BET because I couldn't "see" myself there, I am tickled pink to see myself on CNN, BBC, ABC, NBC, in the NYTimes, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. McCain just looked like a stammering fool some times, and I don't want to be represented by someone who gives that off. And perhaps that's not a major issue, but if 94% of what makes meaning in a message to me is non-verbal communication, then who cares what he's saying, especially when I disagree 52% of the time? HOPE is a good message, and McCain couldn't sell it. Not looking like Hell on Redbull shots.
And... and I am just so glad to have the President be smart. My President THINKS! He THINKS ladies and gentlemen! HE IS A GOOD MAN WITH A GREAT MIND!
And oh yeah, my President is Black.
And that's it. NO MORE BARACK*
Back to the business at hand...
The Life and Times of New Millennium Negroes (worldwide!)
Until the next,
mdot, who is so proud, really, and can only imagine how much this means to those who fought, marched, sat in, stood up, got beat down all so that we could be hear - most of them thinking that like Moses, they'd lead us, but that they themselves would never see it: TASTE AND SEE, MY ELDERS, THAT THE LORD IS GOOD! WELL DONE, YOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL ELDERS. ASHE!
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