The other thing I want to say today, and then I'll get my ass off to work, is that people need to lighten up. And I especially mean frickin' baby boomers with their over masticated ideas about what is so gawd-awfully significant about Obama being a black man in the Oval Office and all the 'I thought I'd never seen this in my life' stuff. I thought I'd never see the end of the Cold War. I thought I'd never see the World Trade Center collapse. I never thought I'd see Saddam Hussein in US captivity. I thought I'd never see New Orleans destroyed. But there are certain things that are inevitable, like a black president, or HDTV or genetic mods to animals, plants and people. They are part of the arc of American possibility, and they are things that we expect of ourselves and that the world expects of America. I also especially mean blackfolks and newbie voters who think a revolution is afoot, as if Barack Obama is not going to behave like a Democrat.
But most of all, I think we should lighten up about race. As far as I'm concerned, and I probably don't say it enough, all of the important stuff was settled many years ago. We have long secured Civil Rights and now should be bored with their politics. As I have been saying, those gains are permanent and nobody is going backwards. We ought now, as blackfolks primarily in the middle class, as we have been for at least a couple decades (was it the Cosby Show era that marked the break, or when more blacks graduated from 'predominantly white' universities than HBCUs?), be concerned with the politics of social power. New aims, new rules, new aesthetics.
I've been cracking up all morning about the title of this blog post. I think it's hilarious. And I know for some it can only be that way because of the reality of Obama's success. But Obama is not the social capital of black America, he never was and he never will be. That's all on us, as Americans. If we are strong, we can take a joke, and for far too long I think we have been pretending that blackfolks aren't strong. We are unchanged in substance through this election and uplifted in spirit in this shining moment. The world is still what it is and our capacity to deal with it does not turn on a dime, but our attitudes matter. And I think a lot of the backbiting and hypersensitivity of this election should be over and we should take it light, crack a joke, take a joke.
Last night I was invited to any number of election parties. I refused them all. I didn't want to look into the eyes of winners and losers. That's not how I see my fellow Americans. Some are just wiser than others, some are better stewards of this nation. It is with the wiser and better stewards that I want to spend my time, and while I sympathize with the crowds and love our ability to share in the great drama of the democratic process, my preference is to deal with change on my own terms. In my responsibilities as a writer, the visual and the personal is a great distraction. But that's just me.
Now I am eager and enthusiastic to hang with people who are feeling the joy, who are feeling energized by the possibility of improving and doing the right thing.
One more thing. I know it might be too much to ask, but will everyone finally admit what I've known all along? The Southern Strategy is Dead.
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