24 Hours Later
When I was twelve, my father and I rode past a police barricade in downtown Pittsburgh where a National Guardsman in riot gear stood watch. There had been race riots in Watts and Newark. There had been riots and a horrible racially motivated murder in York. Unrest was seething just a few miles from the safe, white suburban community in which we lived. It was 1969, MLK’s assassination and Malcolm X’s assassination were still fresh and raw in my mind and I asked my father if there would be a race war in this country. He said he wasn’t sure, but he felt optimistic that cooler heads would eventually prevail.
Shortly thereafter, we, the Weisses, broke bread with an African American family, I guarantee you, a first for my Italian/Russian extended family. What made the dinner even more interesting was that our host, Regis Debonis, was my father’s boss at Mercy hospital where he’d worked for over a decade. The Debonis family lived in a better house than we did. A new car was parked in their garage, while my father drove a battered clunker of a station wagon that was older than I was. Their kids wore new clothes. We wore hand-me-downs. In some families, this would and could have been the source of jealousy and enmity but for my family, this was what my educator sibs call a “teachable moment.” My father, as we drove home from that extraordinary, but entirely ordinary evening, argued that if white and black American families could just sit down to dinner as we’d just done, that most of our misunderstandings would go away.
These two events in 1969 dramatically “bookended” my understanding of race in America. How far apart we thought we were. How close we actually are. I am extremely grateful that my parents provided the direct personal experience to belie all of the stereotypes and bigotry I grew up with in my extended family. I think it was and is the rare experience, to grow up white in America and not confront racism in your own family—extended or otherwise. It was always a moral dilemma for me. Do you try to shout down your 85 year old Uncle Joe, headed to Purgatory for a long sit for the years of Sundays he dishonored my mother’s table with his steady invective spew? How do you confront your cousins, who you love and were raised with and tell them everything they think they know about race relations is wrong? In my urban Fairmount neighborhood, we’re close to families who tell of years of confrontations they had with “blacks” and how those confrontations confirmed the worst of everything their own parents taught them. In the last two years, we’ve had three muggings on my street, all black on white. How do you explain to people that you care about, that despite years of “the evidence of the street,” that you will never be suspicious or raise your children to be suspicious of somebody just because of their skin color. They look at you and say, “See, you are just being naive” and there’s some truth to it.
While I always clung to my father’s sense of reasonableness I also grew more cynical, as it seemed clear that the transcendent Civil Rights Movement leaders had been martyred only to be replaced by the lesser angels of victimhood and divisiveness who confirmed intolerant people’s worst assumptions about race, work ethic, diversity, intelligence and entitlement. People on both sides of the divide could then say knowingly, “See, nothing really changes.” I must confess that I had no reason to expect that a standard bearer of more enlightened race relations would ever rise again to articulate a message to the world that my immediate family had already internalized. The best that I could hope for was to stand on my own lessons and pass them to my children. So I’ve always felt a measure of pride, that we chose to live in a city where we are just one more “minority” in a multi-cultural pot of minorities, that my boys go to school with children of different and mixed races, that they bring friends of all races into our home, that we’ve been governed by three African American mayors and that in one important way, we’ve personally evolved beyond the experiences of the previous generation. My sons don’t see “color” in the same way that I did. They see racial prejudice, if they think about it at all, as a historical artifact and not something they’ve had to live with and confront.
What happened to our nation last night will teach the world what I learned as a boy of twelve. Families at dinner tables will be compelled by the evidence of their own eyes, to have new conversations and come to new conclusions. Centuries of “learned behavior” will be gradually unlearned and replaced by new beliefs. I have always held that America is the world’s greatest laboratory of change. Like the lessons of tolerance that my family learned, we’ve had scant evidence and scant reason to be optimistic about “the experiment” since the 60’s, but a mere 40+ years later, Barack has burst on to the world stage and has blazed trails, not of racial entitlement, but of human entitlement. He had plenty of opportunities at many turns during this campaign, to play “the race card” and chose not to. I doubt he ever will. Thanks to him, the concept of a “race card” became outdated last night and will pass in less than a generation into historical artifact.
John McCain called Barack, “MY PRESIDENT.” That is perhaps the first maverick thing that I’ve heard him say of late that I completely endorse. For decades, I have not been able to say those words with any sense of pride of ownership. Rather, I was more inclined to endorse Michelle Obama’s view of not always being proud of our country. If anything; I’d thought she’d understated the case. I have been telling Bennett, apologizing really, that my generation which had started with such starry-eyed idealism had capitulated so utterly. That is was going to be up to him and his generation to get pissed and pick up the mantle of activism that we’d dropped.
Kate, Char, K I thought of your beautiful mixed race daughters, your multinational sons and our multi-ethnic sons last night when my president ”used his words” to envisioned a world a hundred years from now. I held my breath. I got chills down my spine and dewy eyed for he’d conjured something that hadn’t existed the night before.
People have criticized Barack for being a man of words, but as leaders, parents and citizens, we use our words as evidence of ideas, intent and deeds that extend the thread of optimism, tentatively, one person, one family, at a time. In my life, optimism has been more often been based on a contrarian act of faith than evidence of durable human progress. But it really happened and it happened here and it happened last night. And I own a piece of it!
Today I am proud beyond measure to be an American and a citizen of the world. The generational compact of a better world passable to the children has never seemed more real. Barring cryogenic preservation, even the youngest of my fellow Boomers will not see the America of the 22nd Century, but we have set its stage so that Barack’s children and our children will. The idealism of the young is a precious and wonderful thing, to be protected and nurtured, but I’d argue that the reawakened idealism of the middle-aged is even more precious, for it is rare and most difficult to rekindle.
So cool.
rmw
From: Charlotte
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 11:20 AM
To: 'Donohue, Kate'
Subject: RE: Obama
This is a very touching and heartfelt piece, Kate! I am taking the opportunity to forward it to some of my friends and family……….thank you for sharing it!
I will never forget the camaraderie and sense of hope for the USA that I experienced working for weeks at the phone banks in the Obama HQ in Philly! Aside from being elated and I feel so sentimental that last night the greatness of the US of A was eventually demonstrated to the World after 8 years of ‘living in the dark ages’! As you say Kate, many young people will proceed through their lives with their idealism intact and I pray their will not be reason for this to cease! The look in many people’s eyes at Grant Park last night made me feel they were focused on a Messiah and at times I felt he was! Yes, I do believe Obama is intelligent and thoughtful enough to choose wise advisors to help him begin to solve some of our problems and ,as he himself mentioned, he will not be able to do so in 4 years, maybe not even 8 but I am convinced he will serve us and the nation to the best of his ability in a selfless and wise way!
FYI – Kenya declared a day of holiday in order to hold feasts to celebrate the victory of their ‘favourite son’! I was so tearful that neither his father, mother or grandmother could be on that stage with him and Michelle’s family last night!
Many warm thoughts to you all,
Char
From: Donohue, Kate
Sent: 05 November 2008 10:04
To: Donohue, Kate
Subject: Obama
Bevan was a flying pig for Halloween and I think that maybe this is the year that pigs really can fly -- last week the Phillies won the World Series and yesterday the United States elected its first African American President.
I volunteered as a poll watcher at a polling location in N Philly near Temple Univ yesterday. I saw so many young people voting for the first time, so excited, so hopeful. They cannot fully appreciate how remarkable this election was, and perhaps that is a good thing. These young people will go forward in life with their idealism intact, convinced that their vote counts and that nothing is impossible. This is just what our nation needs right now.
I shared a hug and misty eyes with a woman as she left the voting booth saying she never thought she would see the day… I witnessed a very frail gentleman arrive just before the polls closed (assisted by a young Obama campaign volunteer). He had been released from the hospital Monday, but wanted so much to vote. Truly it was an historic election.
While it feels like victory, the battle has just begun. President Obama will need all the prayers that we can send, and all the support that we can provide, to govern this country. Let’s hope that he has the wisdom, and that we have the courage, to resolve some of our problems…
k
