Transformative Moments: Election 2008 and the Continued Saliency of Race
by Abigail A. Sewell
NSF/ Ford Foundation/ Ronald E. McNair Fellow
Indiana University, Bloomington

The willingness to believe in the possibilities of America is the social ideology underlying an Obama win. This is my generation's transformative moment? Just as MLK and JFK assassinations were transformative for the generation of the 60s, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression for the generation of the 20s, and the Civil War and the end of slavery for the generation of the 1860s. I take this moment to pay homage to my elders who uprooted their families from various parts of the Caribbean under the banner of this hope, to my father who since becoming an American citizen stood in a line for the first time to cast his vote in 2008, and to the generations of Americans-black, white, and in between-who have given their lives to the possibility my generation would see this moment. My deepest gratitude is owed to you.

America has taken a definitive step towards racial equality in politics. The symbolic implications of race are transforming with this election, just as the symbolic implications of race were transformed with the Civil Rights movement. In prior centuries, blacks were "freedmen," "coloured," "Negroes;" a sense of pride was captured only in those closed spaces coveted by blacks; and the oftentimes brutal reality of race forced them to close rank and fight back for their dignity, legacy, and humanity.

Despite all the heroics of the Civil Rights movement, legal concessions by whites in power seemed to all but completely regress over the last three decades of the 20th century. However, in the post-Civil-Rights era black was beautiful; black styles were cool and profitable; black upward mobility was possible. In these times the seeds of both dreams and destruction were planted: hip hop and crack cocaine hit the streets; affirmative action programs and the prison industrial complex blossomed. Early in this new millennium, America has witnessed the transformative possibilities behind the doors the Civil Rights movement opened.

We stand at the brink of a new history--one whose name is more contested, whose identity is more ambiguous, and whose future has hardly been conceived. The social scientists did not predict this a year ago; the political pundits now claim the grievances of racial politics are over; the skeptics stare into the next four years with fear and bewilderment. Again, the symbolic meaning of race is changing: some whites look beyond race (44% of whites voted for Obama), some blacks with human and cultural capital garner legitimacy, and some Americans find hope in the new era. This transformative moment is the embodiment of the much-heralded and often-scolded American Dream.

Forty or so years from now, a new generation of hopefuls will usher in the post-racial America many claim is here. However, now at the height of our hope, the statistics do not lie. Blacks have higher levels of mortality than other racial/ethnic groups, send their children to less endowed schools, and confront lower reemployment rates at the end of recessions. Black men disproportionately trade paying income taxes for sitting behind the walls of jails on petty drug charges. Black families face foreclosure, neighborhood decline, and segregated spaces at higher rates than other families. Instead of outright violence, the subtle subtexts of inferiority are etched into attitudes regarding the disloyalty of blacks, the motivational roots of inequality, and the hypersensitivity of those who perceive discrimination. Sociologists suggest that the sources of these inequalities are the micro and macro processes of racism structured into the American social system. This "new" America is the authentic perfect union; and, as a land of immigrants, the "browning" of America has always been deeply American. Yet, we are still heirs to a society where civil liberties, opportunity structures, and social distresses are racialized. It still took an economic crisis, disdain for anything Bush-related, and a near-perfect campaign for (contested) blackness to reach the White House. I challenge this new generation to find ways to organize for racial justice? Not just by one act at one transformative moment, but by acknowledging the very essence of race in our everyday lives.


This article also appears in the Herald Times at http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2008/12/10/column.qp-2096431.sto and in the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section of Race and Ethnic Minorities (SREM) newsletter.