New dealer shuffles the race card

Shortly after leaving the voting booth, 70-year-old community activist Donald E. Robinson had a thought: "Why do I have to be listed as African-American? Why can't I just be American?"

The answer used to be simple: because a race-obsessed society made the decision for him. But after Barack Obama's mind-bending presidential victory, there are rumblings of change in the nature of black identity and the path to economic equality for black Americans.

Before Tuesday, black identity and community were largely rooted in the shared experience of the struggle — real or perceived — against a hostile white majority. Even as late as Election Day, many blacks still harbored deep doubts about whether whites would vote for Obama.

Obama's overwhelming triumph cast America in a different light. There was no sign of the "Bradley Effect," when whites mislead pollsters about their intent to vote for black candidates. Nationwide, Obama collected 44 percent of the white vote, more than John Kerry, Al Gore or even Bill Clinton, exit polls show.

In Ohio, domain of the fabled working-class white swing voter, where journalists unearthed multitudes of racist quotes during the campaign, 46 percent of white voters backed Obama's bid to become the first black president, more than the three previous Democratic candidates.

Remember "we're votin'for the ni@@er"?

Obama did not define himself as a black candidate. So Robinson now feels free to define himself as something more than a black community activist.

"We've taken that next step. It's moving toward what we call universal brotherhood and sisterhood," Robinson said after voting for Obama in his northwest Washington, D.C., neighborhood. "We shouldn't be split and have all these divisions. That's why I say it's a bright day."

L. Douglas Wilder, the first black person to be elected governor of Virginia, shares Robinson's sense of American identity. "But I can tell you, when you say that, people take umbrage," Wilder said. "They believe that you are dissing them, putting blacks down. I don't have to tell you what I am, you can look at me and see that I'm not white. So what difference does it make?"

It took Obama's election, however, to make that idea real.

"It's immediately transformative," Wilder said. "It immediately changes the level of discussion. This thing is bigger than we thought it was. It's too big to get our arms around, and it grows exponentially each passing day. It sets us on a brand-new course."

It's honestly the most remarkable thing about the Obama phenomenon to me; the ability to have conversations about race, about race relations, about racial taboos with people of other races that simply weren't happening before.

To acknowledge the attitudes without being invested in the emotions. You know what I'm talkin' about, right?

Yet the past is a heavy burden to shed. U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a former civil rights activist who was jailed during the protest marches of the 1960s, said that Obama's election does move America toward a "more perfect union." But when it comes to self-definition, he believes the current state of that union leaves him no choice.

"We don't come into this world defining ourselves," Clyburn said. "I was born into a world that had defined limits for me. I had to sit on the back of the bus, I couldn't attend the nearby school. My wife had to walk 2 1/2 miles to school, walk past the white school to get to the school for blacks. She didn't define that role for herself. That role was imposed upon us."

Certainly racism did not disappear after Obama's white votes were counted. No one is claiming that black culture and pride and community are no longer valuable. Many also dismiss the idea of a "post-racial" America as long as blacks and other minorities are still disproportionately afflicted by disparities in income, education, health, incarceration and single parenthood.

Ah yes. Still a long way to go in terms of economic and not just social justice.

So the prospect of a black population that is more of "America" than "black America" has profound implications — especially for the civil rights establishment that continues to battle for blacks who remain at the bottom. ...

"My grandmother told me when I was 5, 'Boy, if they ask you what you are, just tell them that you're an American," said Benjamin Jealous, the 35-year-old president of the NAACP. "The reality is that our heritage, our culture, our families, our community have been extremely important to us. It's always been our right, and in many ways what we fought for, to be seen simply as Americans."

Progress.

Update: "Mutts like me"...

"Obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me," Obama said with a smile. "So whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household."

In his first postelection news conference, the man who will be president in just over two months described himself as a mutt as casually as he may have poked fun at his jump shot.

If he thought nothing of such a remark in his first news conference, doesn't that signal that over the next four years, the country is likely to hear more about race from the White House – and from the perspective of a black man – than it ever has before?

It's not necessarily that he will make a crusade about the issue once he takes office. There was little sign of that in his election campaign, in which he ran on issues like the economy with a broad appeal to all Americans.

But it does underscore that the president-elect clearly does not see race as a subject best sidestepped or discussed in hushed tones. To Obama, race in all its complications has long been a defining part of his life, and he is comfortable talking about it.

And many of the rest of us will get there, too.

Houston ATB (After the Bushes)

Former Texas Monthly writer Mimi Swartz, from the New Yorker blog:

It was a quiet evening for the precinct captains working the polls at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, partly because so many people had voted early, but mostly because an era had already passed. The once modest and now grand St. Martin’s—it was converted, in 2004, into an updated, Texas-sized version of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres—sits in Tanglewood, a once modest and now grand Houston neighborhood that has been, and is now, home to George and Barbara Bush. St. Martin’s, known here casually as “the Bushes’s church,” seemed to grow and expand with the family fortunes, and it was icing on the cake that its vast expansion coincided with George W. Bush’s reëlection. Houston, after all, is dotted with tributes to the Bushes, from public libraries to elementary schools to the major airport. But on this night, St. Martin’s, the polling place for the staunchly Republican precinct 234, seemed almost vestigial. The television cameras were nowhere to be seen—the Houston Chronicle hadn’t run the traditional photo of George and Bar heading proudly to the polls—and people seemed sanguine about the election’s outcome. They looked more like well-moderated ’41 Republicans than fire-breathing ’43 Republicans: whites who were prosperous but not flashy, the men in khakis, the women in sturdy, appropriate heels, younger people who looked slightly older than their years. The poll workers’ snacks were ample but reasonable: homemade cakes and brownies, tuna fish—canned with mayo, not seared—chips and dips, pimento cheese, and, of course, salsa. Voices were politely hushed.

Since the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Texas in general and Houston in particular have had the feel of occupied territory. The senior Bushes served as local proctors, whether they meant to or not, Barbara playing bad cop to the Senior George’s good. They thrived surrounded by courtiers in their beloved Tanglewood, and their appearance at social events (rare) and charity events (frequent) made everyone stand up just a little straighter, lest they be found wanting. Except for a handful of people who had really known “Junior” growing up—they were the ones who quietly admitted they awakened each morning stunned that “George” was President—it was accepted that the 43rd President was “a good guy,” and part of proving your loyalty involved ponying up for Barbara Bush’s literacy galas and 41’s birthday benefits. Book signings for assorted memoirs generally produced queues of fans that would rival those for Beatles- reunion tickets. Contributing to Neil Bush’s entrepreneurial ventures, such as Ignite!, an educational software company for “different” learners, was not a bad idea either. The Houston Independent School District got in on that one.

This loyalty took on a maniacal edge after 9/11, with what you might call the Dinner Party Litmus Test. Suddenly, at events in fancy, deeply Republican neighborhoods like River Oaks and Memorial, there were more closeted Democrats than closeted gays. To mention opposition to the war was to risk excommunication, not just from the Houston social scene, but from the kind of friendly business deals that grease the city’s wheels. The writer John Judis once sucked the air out of a room at an otherwise cheery River Oaks gathering by voicing the sentiment—not so uncommon elsewhere—that the Iraq war was a catastrophe. No one dared put a Kerry sticker on his or her car in 2004, lest a crazed Tanglewood carpool mom take aim with her Ford Explorer. “You weren’t allowed to speak. If you weren’t on the team, you might as well have left town,” one longtime social observer noted, still cautious about speaking for attribution.

Then, like the tide ebbing, or a glacier slowly melting, Houston—which, by the way, voted Democratic in both 2000 and 2004—came back to itself. Certainly Bush’s lame-duck status, in 2004, cleared the air a bit, as did the quagmire in Iraq. But it was Hurricane Katrina, in the fall of 2005, that made many here take a second look at their favorite first family. While the rest of Houston busily displayed its beneficent side—reaping copious international praise in the process—Barbara Bush looked around at the shell-shocked evacuees in the Astrodome and voiced her fear that they might stick around: “…so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.” It wasn’t that she said it—people knew she talked that way in private—but this time she was quoted locally, and the spell was broken. The run-up to 2008 turned into an old-fashioned Houston free-for-all, and for the first time in ages, the Democratic Presidential candidate carried Harris County. Even if Tanglewood went for McCain, the people at St. Martin’s knew it was over. They packed their tuna fish in plastic containers, and went back home.