HISTORY HAS BEEN MADE

No matter who wins the election this November, history has been made.  The Democrats have nominated an African American to carry their banner into the Presidential election in November. 

However it played out this year, America was bound to reach a milestone, since the other viable contender for the nomination was a woman.   It had been 24 years since a woman was on the ticket for the top spot in the land.

Barack Obama is more than interesting.  He is not a product of big city black neighborhoods, like Bill Cosby or Spike Lee.  Nor does he come from the Jim Crow south like Jesse Jackson’s Greenville, SC and Clarence Thomas’ Pin Point, GA. Jesse Jackson’s Greenville neighborhood was a collection of homes built alongside dirt roads.  I know, because I delivered newspapers on my bike over those roads back in the ‘50’s.  Thomas’ Pin Point, is literally that…a pin point a mile wide and a mile and a half long.

Obama’s foundations were rather exotic.  He was raised for a time in Indonesia, and also in Hawaii.

Obama does not come from the traditional black church.  Although he may have joined one as a young adult, he missed the gospel-music fueled services that were home to Aretha Franklin and Al Sharpton, who was an ordained minister at age 9.

Obama’s religious education was practically non-existent.  His mother may have been an atheist, his parents were not involved in their Methodist and Baptist backgrounds.  His father was an atheist, although born a Muslim, and his Indonesian step-father, also a Muslim, found religion to be “not particularly useful”.

He does share something with Sharpton, Thomas and Jackson, however.  Like Sharpton and Thomas, Obama’s father abandoned him and his mother at a young age.  Jackson’s father was married to another woman, leaving his mother to raise him alone.

Furthermore, Barack Obama comes from another unique group, if only peripherally.  His father was an African immigrant to the United States, here primarily to take advantage of educational opportunities.  There is a sub-group of African Americans in this country who don’t share the slave background of the majority of African Americans.  These are immigrants who chose to come here.  Ironically, they are the most highly educated group of Americans there is, surpassing even those who came from Asian countries and while their collective incomes are not as high as Asian immigrants, they rank among highest income sub-group in the country.

Obama is not the first African American to run for President.  Jesse Jackson did this in 1984, and again in 1988.  Al Sharpton followed in 2004.  Senator Joe Biden, now Obama’s running mate, said last year, that …”you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy.”  He apologized a few days later. 

So history has been made, and in many ways, Spike Lee’s prediction that from now on everything will be referenced as BB and AB (Before Barack and After Barack) will probably be true.  For sure, the “barriers” will be coming down, if not this November, then surely in the years to come.  Names like Johnson and Kennedy, Bush and Carter, Clinton and Ford will be replaced by non-European names like Obama, or Jindal or Villagarosa.  And first names like Jimmy, George, Bill and John will certainly give way to Sarah, Hillary, Kaye and Caroline.

And that’s good.