November/December 2008

Yes we did!

By Joy Francis, Words of Colour Co-founder

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk.
Martin walked so Barack Obama could run.
Barack is running so our children can fly!

This is the mobile text message that greeted me and hundreds of other people on Tuesday 4th November when the votes were being counted in the most fiercely contested and globally watched American Presidential election in living memory.

Almost everyone I spoke to that day was cautious. Remember eight years ago, they warned. George W. Bush’s Democratic opponent Al Gore was 12 points ahead in the polls – and he still lost. Don’t tempt fate was the mantra. So the collective exhalation that could be heard across Britain when Barack Hussein Obama was declared the 44th and first black President of the United States could have whipped up a tornado.

The joy, awe and impact were, and are, immeasurable. The broadcast scenes of young and old, gay and straight, black, white and Hispanic, blue collar, middle class and wealthy standing side by side cheering and crying can never be erased from memory or history. An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets in anticipation of this result, which shows why this wasn’t a token victory, a revenge vote or a hollow gesture. This was yearned, prayed and hoped for.

Despite the media’s attempt to focus the debate on Obama’s inexperience and racial heritage with his white American mother and black Kenyan father, which is important, the many ‘firsts’ he achieved with his effective campaign means his success defies pigeonholing.

No other presidential hopeful has managed to generate so many first time voters among the young, Hispanic and African-American people. No other presidential hopeful has managed to convince 136.6 million people to stand patiently in line to make their vote count – even if it wasn’t for him. And no other presidential hopeful has managed to campaign solidly for 21 months and make so few mistakes.

But then he had little choice but to be almost perfect. As an African-American man of mixed race heritage he, his campaign team and his wife Michelle knew he couldn’t put a foot wrong or wrong more than once. No one questions a white candidate about his ‘relevance’ to African-American, Native American, Asian or Hispanic voters. Yet black candidates are always, without fail, asked about their relevance to white voters.

This tacit inequality is where the race debate needs to position its glare. He had to be impeccable, hyper intelligent, attractive, consistent, calm under ungracious fire and transcend racial divisions to win. He had to be near perfect to win against a much less dynamic, quite mediocre opponent in John McCain, and his beyond incompetent running mate Sarah ‘Africa is a country’ Palin.

Obama’s wife and beautiful daughters Sasha and Malia have held their own under intense scrutiny. This scrutiny has given the impression that they are a team. That there is great love and fun between them, and that Michelle is his partner, wife and lover. Their public displays of affection have a wonderful sensuous potency that we have yearned and yet to see between black couples on screen, in magazines or on posters.

Back in central London on Wednesday 5th November the streets were muted. Travelling on the tube was reminiscent of my first train ride after the 7/7 bombings. A genteel silence and furtive glances pervaded the carriages. No excited or heated conversations about Obama’s success. Maybe it was my imagination. I started to strike up conversations with people about the news – in the bank, in Boots and finally in Sainsbury’s. The people I spoke to were positive but in a low key, almost secretive way.

The Sainsbury’s cashier, a young black woman no older than 20, looked relieved at my interest in her views on the Obama win. I asked her why? ‘You are the first person to be positive about this all day’. Shocked I pressed her to explain. ‘The reactions, especially from black people, have been “oh, it was a fix” or “he’ll only get killed ”.’

White people, I noticed, were not making much eye contact. Only one white woman, holding The Guardian aloft, beamed openly at me. It was as if people needed a script with directions as to how to respond appropriately as there was no precedent. Possibly the shoe was on the other foot in that America has progressive Obama while we, in London, have Boris ‘the buffoon’ Johnson, was one suggestion.

The question now being asked is whether this could happen in the UK. America was preparing itself for this day in a way that has always been visible, unlike Britain. They have seen black judges, lawyers and surgeons on television. They have witnessed, in reality, black astronauts go into space and black mayors get elected. And they recently voted Morgan Freeman and Dennis Haysbert as two of the best portrayals of American Presidents on screen.

We are still fighting for many of these successes while many of our best creative talents are leaving here for the US to act in TV shows like The Wire or Without a Trace or to make films like Adrian Lester, Idris Elba and Asher D.

In the UK we are still experiencing the Daily Mail syndrome. Hundreds of thousands of people buy the right wing newspaper, but very few ever admit they do. And that hypocrisy is what many Obama supporters in the UK feared would happen at the ballot box on the day: that the reality of voting for a man of colour to lead one of the most powerful countries on the planet would be too much to bear. Thankfully we were wrong.

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk.
Martin walked so Barack Obama could run.
Barack is running so our children can fly!
Our children can now fly......

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