Listening to Those Who Weren’t Cheering Last Week
By Jesse Singal - Nov 12th, 2008 at 1:13 pmThis Race Wire piece on Barack Obama’s victory is worth a read. I disagree with much of it and think there are parts that simply aren’t well-thought-out (Obama mentioning “original sin” in a speech “begets the white Christian nation’s perpetual forgiveness and redemption”? Really?), but it represents a set of voices that have been drowned out in the last week.
There are people who think that our system is so broken that Obama, in the long run and regardless of the promises and symbolism he wields, will do little to fix the same problems that have always plagued us. They feel that we will still live in a country where racism is endemic and devastating, where there are two sets of human rights, one for the well-connected and one for everyone else, and where the lofty promises “guaranteed” by the Constitution mean nothing because of how many people are, in actuality, excluded from them.
While these points are all at least partially true, it’s hard for me to take quite as pessimistic a view as this–I believe that the system, as it stands or in some similar version, can improve itself, slowly and incrementally. But I do think there’s a tremendous risk of falling into a trap where the political parties that helped create many of our society’s most catastrophic problems and divisions (and make no mistake–both of them did) are able to periodically present themselves–and their candidates–as the solutions to said problems, over and over.
There’s a simple solution to whether Obama is the “real deal” progressives have been looking for, whether he represents a true departure from Democratic and Republican politics: wait and see. But while many of us celebrated last week, we run the risk myopia if we ignore those who refused to.
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