So What’s Changed?

Barak Obama is the first black president of the United States (I never bought into the talk that said it was Clinton) and that apparently is supposed to mean something’s changed. I’ve been asked what I ‘think’ about it. Whether it’s some kind of bell weather that going to change the dynamics of racism in the country? If this means that Dr. King’s dream as finally come true in America? Can white guys now say ‘the n-word’? Answer to those questions is “I don’t know.” I try not to speak for whole groups of people so I won’t even attempt to explain what I believe ‘black people’ think this means. I don’t give a lot of thought to what ‘black people’ as a group thinks about anyway. Never understood how I was supposed to have that insight.

At first I thought there was only one way Obama’s presidency mattered to me and that’s politically. I’ve never been impressed with any politician regardless of color and was only impressed with Obama’s oratory skills not his political policies and I was perfectly capable of separating the two. I’m too politically cynical to assume that just because the color of skin of the guy running things changes to mine there’s a relationship between that and my life improving. So politically for me it doesn’t change a lot. His politics and mine aren’t even close in foreign policy and his domestic policies were to ‘democratic’ for my tastes (note the small ‘d’). Even though I consider that side of the political coin more socially reasonable in relation to domestic social policy (but not by much) I consider their methods to be needlessly incremental to the harm of those they profess to be helping. Mr. Obama presented a face in the election that gave the impression that the change he wanted was the democratic definition and that only had appeal given McCain and republicans as the alternative.

But now he’s president and given that I watch a lot of news I’ve got to see him ‘be president’ for a couple of weeks now. Again, given that he’s just a progressive, middle of the road democrat he didn’t act in any way that I didn’t expect. He made some promises and he went about attempting to keep those that were ‘politically sound now that he is president’, just like past presidents had done. He was fitting into the slot of ‘politician president’ just fine. But then I noticed a ‘change’. Something was askew visually and audibly about the presentation.

But before I get into that I’d like to make a slight side step. My niece was by last night and in a conversation about how life in general was going and how the economy was negatively affecting the lives of people that we know a tangential conversation occurred in which I pointed out how one day while riding to work with a friend early in the election I said that there was no way that Barak Obama would become president of these United States. I believed it was an interesting phenomenon that was probably just another news charade to ‘entertain’ people while the fix was in for Hillary Clinton who would lose thus giving the whole thing away to the republicans again. Because, quite frankly, I also believed that her campaign had as much chance as Barak Obama’s.

I say that to point out how far I had to come from to get used to the concept of a black and/or woman president. Don’t get me wrong, I personally didn’t have any objection if the right one came around. My issue was that I didn’t think “America” was ready to make that happen and I saw nothing about these two that changed that perception in my mind.

So what’s changed for me because there’s a black president? I have to actually get used to ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ a black man do the job of president. When I look at the television set and see a person with brown skin speaking for ‘this’ country in an intelligent, commanding manner there is a visual dissonance that I have to adjust to. When I hear the words come out of his mouth in a cadence that is familiar in neighborhoods and homes I’ve visited my mind still has to say, ‘yeah, he’s president’ as if the affirmation was necessary for me to accept it. It’s as if I’m still making small mental adjustments to visual and audio that I never thought I would experience.

Just that, nothing else.

So basically I am being forced to change and accept something that I didn’t’ think could happen. My mind is being forced to wrap around something that it just wasn’t particularly prepared to accept.

I’m not particularly worried about it. I’ve had other epiphanies in my life that changed the way I had to think. At 5 or 6 years old I had the honestly held belief that the opposite sex had no value and associating with them could never come to any good. That was something that was the gospel. I had an experience that changed that thought process too but that’s an entirely different story.

Oh yeah. It also means that people can stop calling Clinton the first black president. I never did understand that.