Talking about Race in a New World

As Obama was elected to the United States Senate and with talk about his Presidential prospects going beyond our family circle, my wife, Naomi, and I became early and enthusiastic supporters.  He made us believe that there was an alternative, another, better America which he could represent and lead, and in which we wanted to be active.  We made early modest financial contributions to his campaign, and in turn the campaign identified us, and recruited Naomi in December of 2007to go to the city of White Plains, New York, near our home, to collect signatures to put Obama’s name on the ballot for New York Democratic Primary.  She spent an afternoon and collected around 20 signatures.  It was hard work.  A cold afternoon, people were not yet focused on the election, and those who were did not think that Obama had a chance, nor was he their choice.

Remember Hillary Clinton was our popular Senator.  Naomi particularly remembers one African American man who practically laughed in her face that she thought Obama had any chance.  Although she did good hard work, I thought I could more easily get as good results at a nearby community center where I swim, and I did.

Our county, Westchester, is a residentially segregated.  Renown for wealth, it is actually quite diverse (40% of the population is non white), with significant immigrant neighborhoods and concentrated African American sections, one of which is served by the Theodore Young Community Center.  Most of the staff and the patrons of the center are African American, but many other people, Latino, Asian and white, also use the Center, for many different activities.  For years, I went to swim.  I didn’t socialize.  I would put in my mile or two, two or three times a week, without making friends and barely having acquaintances.  I worked out and went home, that is, until I decided to try to match Naomi’s collection of signatures, doing so in less than an hour before and after a mid day swim.

In a way, it wasn’t as easy as I had expected.  Many of the staff had their doubts. Before the primary, Clinton had visited the center as our Senator.  As the Primary season opened, Hillary was polling significantly ahead of Obama among African Americans, and if anything at the Center this was especially the case.  A number of people refused to sign.  Most signed right away, particularly when I explained that the issue was getting him on the ballot and not choosing him over Hillary.  But they did not think that Obama had a realistic chance and were uncertain about him.  To make a long story short, this initiated a series of discussions and activities, and friendships, some of them deep.   The community came to support Obama with great passion and I was a welcomed as the one who first exhibited that passion when others had their doubts.

We have followed the campaign and Obama’s Presidency together, with increasing enthusiasm.  I made what became a locally famous bet with a lifeguard, Preston Brown, after he teased me about my believing that Obama would win the primary campaign.  Later when it was not certain whether Clinton or Obama would prevail in the democratic contest, we made a second bet.  I bet that the Democratic candidate, either Obama or Clinton, would beat McCain.  As an experienced black man in his forties, he was sure that Americans would neither vote for a black man nor a white woman.  Two meals were on the line, which I happily won with a dinner for three, inviting another lifeguard, Tim John to a lunch at our local Applebees.

As the campaign proceeded I invited my friends, among others, Monique Gaston,  Pat Richards, Tim Johns, Janet Allen,Ted Dowie, Judith Lee, Norma Jean Barnes, Patricia Roper, and Lee Trollinger, to take part in some campaign activities I was engaged in: a “Barack the Vote” concert on the Hudson River , a phone bank, a trip to campaign in Northwest Philadelphia.  They invited me to attend and speak at the community gathering in the gymnasium to watch the inauguration.  We all went out for drinks and food to celebrate his victory and again to celebrate the first hundred days.

Beverly McCoy being interviewed before viewing Obama inauguration at the Theodore D. Young Community Center

A particularly key person in this emerging social group was the Community Center’s receptionist, Beverly McCoy.  She is a very special person, the social center of the community’s life.  She is vivacious and friendly, knows just about everyone who uses the center, from the young summer campers, to the many senior citizens, from the teenagers taking African dance classes to the elderly Chinese members who meet for Chinese cultural activities.  She has just the right word to say to them to brighten their days (“Happy Tuesday!”).  She is the community center’s natural community organizer.  Obama does not have a stronger supporter than Beverly.  If it weren’t for Beverly, I would have become a curiosity to the staff and patrons of the center, the white guy who early on was collecting those signatures.   Instead, I was welcomed into a community.

Around Beverly’s reception desk people gather to discuss the problems of the day, a micro – public space to share the fears and concerns about the Tea Party, to discuss the latest news on the healthcare debate, to cheer Beverly up when “our guy” is having a hard time, to revel in our success after an accomplishment.  These discussions cut across racial and class lines.  We openly, or at least more openly than I have ever heard, speak about experiences of racism, intermarriage, inter racial understandings and misunderstandings, without the recriminations and clichés of the everyday and of abstract theory.  Eric Holder, soon after he became Attorney General, noted in a provocative speech that Americans are cowards when it comes to speaking about race.

The exceptional nature of our discussions around Beverly’s desk, which my intuition tells me has been repeated in other small American venues since the election of Barack Obama, reveals the truth of Holder’s controversial observation.  Even in the mass media, with all the stylized performances and cynical manipulations, it seems to me, there has been a change.

Of course change has its limits, even in our little world.  When Preston, Tim and I had our lunch at Applebees, there was a lot of kidding, a continuation of the exchanges that occurred between us throughout the campaign and which have continued during the Obama Presidency.  But then, especially, Preston needed to underscore that he always wanted Obama to win, just didn’t believe that it was possible.  He admitted that the victory told him something new about white people, as it told blacks, whites and other Americans something new about who we are.  Yet, the reaction against Obama, the special hatred, the accusations that he is not really an American, the cries for taking our country back, confirmed that our worst fears are not over and done with, that America is far from being a post racial society.  When it came to paying the check, this sad truth was confirmed in an eerie way.  Preston asked for the check and the waiter brought it to me to pay.  Two black guys and a white guy.  Obviously the white guy would be paying.  There was nothing intentionally demeaning in the waiter’s gesture.  He simply enacted the still prevailing everyday assumptions about race and status in America.  The change is that around Beverly desk at the community center, we talk about this and that we have connected this talk to the way we act politically.  American political culture is being reinvented.