I was born in 1961 in the Garden State, only a few miles from New York City. My mother was born in Manhattan; my father was a first-generation American born in north Jersey.
For the first 7 years of my life I traveled in and around such places as Paterson (the town outside Manhattan most closely connected to 9/11), Newark, and Jersey City. Readers familiar with these cities know their racial composition well; I understood the idea of "projects" from travelling to my aunt's apartment in Jersey City and our forays around the Bronx (where my mother had been raised). Most of my father's extended family, after a deep and profound tragedy fell on the Gnades eight weeks before my birth, moved to New Hampshire soon after I was born; my immediate family would enjoy summer holidays in New Hampshire's Monadnock region until my father moved us all to that fine enclave 40 years ago this coming Wednesday.
I share all this as a prelude to a confession, and that confession is that while I intellectually understand the historical dimension of the election of Barack Obama to the White House -- he being an African-American -- his election did not feel historical in the least. Of course, I am talking as a 47-year-old white man raised mostly in snow-white southwestern New Hampshire. I am too young to have witnessed racial discrimination in any meaningful way, and I was raised, largely, in a culture and in a family at war with racism. I came of age, after all, in the 1960s and 1970s, where my cohort was trained by family and school, and even TV and Hollywood, not to see skin color as ontologically important. Perhaps my favorite childhood novels were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; I am glad to say that I was one of Twain's readers (he used to summer in my New Hampshire home town) who never once felt that he hated dear, sweet Jim, the runaway slave.
I recall the countless black figures I adored, and even imitated, as a child and teenager. On TV, who did not like Linc from "The Mod Squad"? Who didn't howl at the antics of Flip Wilson, Nipsy Russell, Redd Foxx, or Sammy Davis, Jr. (I loved Wilson, Foxx and Davis)? Who didn't love the tales of Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert" or Cosby's role on "I Spy?" What boy did not find Teresa Graves fantastically desirable on "Laugh-In" or the short-lived "Get Christy Love"?
I remember clearly claiming as a youngster that Sidney Poitier was my favorite actor, as he embodied (cinematically, at least) the sort of conviction and resolve that were quintessentially masculine and heroic.
And what child was not moved by the voice of Martin Luther King; who can forget the pall over the land, and in one's own living room, when that great man was killed?
My dad was an ardent boxing fan; I was weened, as were countless American boys, on Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frasier, and the sculpted Ken Norton (and this skinny boy thought Sugar Ray Leonard the very epitome of stealth and swiftness). Many of my playmates would scream out the names of favorite basketball players -- claiming to be their sudden incarnations on the playground -- as they nailed a shot from downtown. Lew Al Cinder (Kareem Abdul Jabbar), Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and a young Dr. J: these were the names young white boys were gleefully and proudly invoking as their patron saints. I wanted to play first base in Little League -- and I did -- because I wanted to be the Red Sox' George Scott; I wanted to be a centerfielder (and I was) because of Willie Mays; I wanted to be Willie Stargell because he could play both fields. I remember watching through tears when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's longstanding home run record; I sat with my father, who was also profoundly moved.
I recall having an Arthur Ashe tennis racket (I confess that I may have stolen it); I remember telling friends that I wanted to be the next Mercury Morris (and boy, am I glad to learn that not all dreams should come true). And though Pelé was Brazilian, he looked every bit as African as any white American boys could know, as they blithely invoked his name when attempting a bicycle kick on the backyard pitch.
As some of us found ourselves drawn toward the counter-culture, many of my cohort (myself included) adored the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix, naming him, with all due air-guitar fanfare and much pot smoke-enshrouded authority, the "Greatest Guitarist in the World"; my sister wanted to be Diana Ross.
My generation has been raised as witnesses to black mayors, governors, senators, and Supreme Court justices. I've seen a black astronaut; I've seen a black secretary of state. I've seen Nelson Mandela hailed as president of the world; I've seen black bishops speak on truth and reconciliation. Many of us have read Hughes and Baldwin and Morrison and Walker; we're the grade-schoolers who huddled around TVs to watch "Roots."
Mine is the generation to first hear (as we all did in high school in the late 1970s and college in the early 1980s) the power of rap; we are, really, the first hip-hop generation.
In short, I am a child of arguably the first generation taught, from birth, to be blind of color. We're the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird children; we're the siblings of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Arsenio Hall, and yes, Barack Obama.
Hence, it was not an emotionally charged moment for me to witness Barack Obama's ascendancy to the White House. I am not saying it was anti-climactic, but merely non-climactic. It was not at all unexpected: many of us are incredibly used to seeing African-Americans in positions attained by excellence and dignity. An African-American president almost feels like it has been done before: the idea, followed by the reality, is not particularly surprising.
Maybe I would feel differently if Barack Obama's story was not what it is. His is not even remotely typical of the American black experience; there is nary a hint of his life's narrative wherein we hear of his being oppressed and trammeled for his race. Perhaps had he been a true descendant of African-American slaves; perhaps if his story began with his maternal and paternal great-grandparents being branded by hot irons in the deep cotton south; perhaps if his struggle was from roots planted in the deepest pain of American segregation; perhaps had he finished college at Howard University, I might have felt differently the night of November 4, 2008. I cannot know.
But I do know that I can recognize what his achievement -- which is also the country's achievement -- means to many of my older fellow citizens who can still feel the pain of racism in America. I also know that it is foolish of me to believe my northern exposure to race is identical with my southern and black peers'; Condoleezza Rice knows first-hand the pain of race in a way I cannot, though we are nearly the same age, separated by only 7 years. In the end, I find that I can intellectually appreciate what Barack Obama's story means to many of my fellow citizens, but I cannot find within me any emotional comparison to the relief and gratitude they are so clearly experiencing. I have to remind myself that Barack Obama is a "person of color"; to me, and my several peers to whom I've spoken about this, the election of Barack Obama to the White House feels utterly familiar. A black man? Who really noticed?
In a very real way, I am a composite of a human being: I am Twain's Jim; I am Flip and Linc and Jimi and Michael and Magic; I am Tiger (I think of him EVERY time I tee up, which is probably a big mistake); I am Willie Mays and Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King and Arthur Ashe and Carl Lewis and Sidney Poitier and Alice Walker and Kunta Kinte. I hurdled as Edwin Moses or O.J. Simpson over the hedge in my neighbor's yard; I threw to home as Reggie Smith. I am a mix, a mongrel, a pure American mutt.
Barack Obama. His story is history. But it is not just his, and when you truly know your own, none of it is really much of a surprise.
Peace.
BG
For the first 7 years of my life I traveled in and around such places as Paterson (the town outside Manhattan most closely connected to 9/11), Newark, and Jersey City. Readers familiar with these cities know their racial composition well; I understood the idea of "projects" from travelling to my aunt's apartment in Jersey City and our forays around the Bronx (where my mother had been raised). Most of my father's extended family, after a deep and profound tragedy fell on the Gnades eight weeks before my birth, moved to New Hampshire soon after I was born; my immediate family would enjoy summer holidays in New Hampshire's Monadnock region until my father moved us all to that fine enclave 40 years ago this coming Wednesday.
I share all this as a prelude to a confession, and that confession is that while I intellectually understand the historical dimension of the election of Barack Obama to the White House -- he being an African-American -- his election did not feel historical in the least. Of course, I am talking as a 47-year-old white man raised mostly in snow-white southwestern New Hampshire. I am too young to have witnessed racial discrimination in any meaningful way, and I was raised, largely, in a culture and in a family at war with racism. I came of age, after all, in the 1960s and 1970s, where my cohort was trained by family and school, and even TV and Hollywood, not to see skin color as ontologically important. Perhaps my favorite childhood novels were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; I am glad to say that I was one of Twain's readers (he used to summer in my New Hampshire home town) who never once felt that he hated dear, sweet Jim, the runaway slave.
I recall the countless black figures I adored, and even imitated, as a child and teenager. On TV, who did not like Linc from "The Mod Squad"? Who didn't howl at the antics of Flip Wilson, Nipsy Russell, Redd Foxx, or Sammy Davis, Jr. (I loved Wilson, Foxx and Davis)? Who didn't love the tales of Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert" or Cosby's role on "I Spy?" What boy did not find Teresa Graves fantastically desirable on "Laugh-In" or the short-lived "Get Christy Love"?
I remember clearly claiming as a youngster that Sidney Poitier was my favorite actor, as he embodied (cinematically, at least) the sort of conviction and resolve that were quintessentially masculine and heroic.
And what child was not moved by the voice of Martin Luther King; who can forget the pall over the land, and in one's own living room, when that great man was killed?
My dad was an ardent boxing fan; I was weened, as were countless American boys, on Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frasier, and the sculpted Ken Norton (and this skinny boy thought Sugar Ray Leonard the very epitome of stealth and swiftness). Many of my playmates would scream out the names of favorite basketball players -- claiming to be their sudden incarnations on the playground -- as they nailed a shot from downtown. Lew Al Cinder (Kareem Abdul Jabbar), Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and a young Dr. J: these were the names young white boys were gleefully and proudly invoking as their patron saints. I wanted to play first base in Little League -- and I did -- because I wanted to be the Red Sox' George Scott; I wanted to be a centerfielder (and I was) because of Willie Mays; I wanted to be Willie Stargell because he could play both fields. I remember watching through tears when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's longstanding home run record; I sat with my father, who was also profoundly moved.
I recall having an Arthur Ashe tennis racket (I confess that I may have stolen it); I remember telling friends that I wanted to be the next Mercury Morris (and boy, am I glad to learn that not all dreams should come true). And though Pelé was Brazilian, he looked every bit as African as any white American boys could know, as they blithely invoked his name when attempting a bicycle kick on the backyard pitch.
As some of us found ourselves drawn toward the counter-culture, many of my cohort (myself included) adored the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix, naming him, with all due air-guitar fanfare and much pot smoke-enshrouded authority, the "Greatest Guitarist in the World"; my sister wanted to be Diana Ross.
My generation has been raised as witnesses to black mayors, governors, senators, and Supreme Court justices. I've seen a black astronaut; I've seen a black secretary of state. I've seen Nelson Mandela hailed as president of the world; I've seen black bishops speak on truth and reconciliation. Many of us have read Hughes and Baldwin and Morrison and Walker; we're the grade-schoolers who huddled around TVs to watch "Roots."
Mine is the generation to first hear (as we all did in high school in the late 1970s and college in the early 1980s) the power of rap; we are, really, the first hip-hop generation.
In short, I am a child of arguably the first generation taught, from birth, to be blind of color. We're the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird children; we're the siblings of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Arsenio Hall, and yes, Barack Obama.
Hence, it was not an emotionally charged moment for me to witness Barack Obama's ascendancy to the White House. I am not saying it was anti-climactic, but merely non-climactic. It was not at all unexpected: many of us are incredibly used to seeing African-Americans in positions attained by excellence and dignity. An African-American president almost feels like it has been done before: the idea, followed by the reality, is not particularly surprising.
Maybe I would feel differently if Barack Obama's story was not what it is. His is not even remotely typical of the American black experience; there is nary a hint of his life's narrative wherein we hear of his being oppressed and trammeled for his race. Perhaps had he been a true descendant of African-American slaves; perhaps if his story began with his maternal and paternal great-grandparents being branded by hot irons in the deep cotton south; perhaps if his struggle was from roots planted in the deepest pain of American segregation; perhaps had he finished college at Howard University, I might have felt differently the night of November 4, 2008. I cannot know.
But I do know that I can recognize what his achievement -- which is also the country's achievement -- means to many of my older fellow citizens who can still feel the pain of racism in America. I also know that it is foolish of me to believe my northern exposure to race is identical with my southern and black peers'; Condoleezza Rice knows first-hand the pain of race in a way I cannot, though we are nearly the same age, separated by only 7 years. In the end, I find that I can intellectually appreciate what Barack Obama's story means to many of my fellow citizens, but I cannot find within me any emotional comparison to the relief and gratitude they are so clearly experiencing. I have to remind myself that Barack Obama is a "person of color"; to me, and my several peers to whom I've spoken about this, the election of Barack Obama to the White House feels utterly familiar. A black man? Who really noticed?
In a very real way, I am a composite of a human being: I am Twain's Jim; I am Flip and Linc and Jimi and Michael and Magic; I am Tiger (I think of him EVERY time I tee up, which is probably a big mistake); I am Willie Mays and Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King and Arthur Ashe and Carl Lewis and Sidney Poitier and Alice Walker and Kunta Kinte. I hurdled as Edwin Moses or O.J. Simpson over the hedge in my neighbor's yard; I threw to home as Reggie Smith. I am a mix, a mongrel, a pure American mutt.
Barack Obama. His story is history. But it is not just his, and when you truly know your own, none of it is really much of a surprise.
Peace.
BG
