A Historic Vote Defying Racism

I got to my polling place at 6:30 this morning, just as the sun was coming out. I was number 16 in line when I got there, and the line was quite long when I left.

There was excitement in the air, mixed with fear that another election might be stolen. And there was almost a sense of giddiness. For many in line, voting at this heavily Democratic precinct was not only about breaking with the eight long years of the Bush Age, but about something bigger still.

And as I voted, I, too, couldn’t help but reflect on the historic nature of the day.

For 400 years, this land has been scarred and marred by racism. It is the blot that would not go away.

150 years ago, blacks in the American South were slaves.

100 years ago, blacks all over America were victims of a plague of lynchings.

50 years ago, blacks in America were still effectively disenfranchised by Jim Crow.

But this year, a black man in America is on the brink of winning the Presidency of the United States.

Like many others, I never thought I’d see the day.

The great poet out of Harlem, Langston Hughes, once wrote:

“Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.”

But he added: “America never was America to me.”

To be sure, if Obama wins, it will not mean the end of racism. Prepare for a backlash. And prepare for a generalized sentiment in the white population that there no longer is any need for affirmative action once a black man sits in the Oval Office.

And to be sure, if Obama wins, it will not mean the end of injustice in America.

In that same poem, Langston Hughes wrote about the profit system “of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.” Obama, despite the red-baiting slurs against him, won’t dismantle that profit system—or the American empire, for that matter.

But for millions of Americans, an Obama victory would carry great symbolism.

“O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.”

On November 4, 2008, it looks like America may come closer to being America than it ever has been before.