I am sorry for my silence; it has been a wave of constant work from way past my bedtime to way before I’m ready to wake up. I am exhausted and ready to sleep for hours on the plane home; and also wishing I lived closer to some of these wonderful people whom I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with. And I wish I could be here on election day.
When I got to Bethesda, we went out and bought election paraphernalia: buttons, window signs, bumper stickers. Obviously the windows and bumper stickers won’t motivate any voters, but we thought we could at least be the KiwiAmerican voice fighting the good fight in Paekakariki. The buttons, however, we could put on and wear from the beginning. I pinned a white Obama/Biden button on my navy blue coat, and walked into the world with it. I am expecting that if (when?) Obama wins, the world will change and, I believe, become better place. What I was not expecting was how the world would change just by virtue of the button.
My first indication was in Chicago. The tall, dark, and handsome doorman to the fancy hotel joked with me as I went for the cab. He teased that he would let me take the cab just in front, as a kind of a gift. “Do you want to know why I’ll let you take this cab?” he asked with a twinkle. No, why? “Because I like your button!” He winked at me and shut me safely in the cab. When I went to get my hair cut, the white guy at the front desk took my coat and then, glancing at the button, lowered his voice, “I don’t usually talk politics with the clients,” he said, “but since I know we’re on the same side…” and he and I chatted about our hopes for Virginia to turn blue.
It doesn’t stop there. One day I was walking down the street, and a middle-aged white woman in a business suit smiled at me. “Go Obama!” she said. The next day in the grocery store, as I was agonizing over which pita chips to buy, one of the store employees, a youngish African man, came over. “Can I help you with anything?” he asked. “No, thanks,” I told him. “Good luck with everything,” he told me. “Er, thanks,” I answered uncertainly. Then he noded at my button. “I mean good luck with everything!” he told me, smiling broadly. “Good luck to us all,” I answered to his pleasure. Another connection made.
When Mom and I were at a shopping mall the next day, an African-American woman sat feeding her little son bananas with kindness and love, and we struck up a vague conversation. She finished her dinner and walked away, only to return a moment later with the familiar, “I like your button!” We three struck up a conversation about politics and hope and our excitement over the campaign; she told us she was a lawyer and would be working to keep the votes safe. We told her we’d do our best too. Another connection.
And another and another. Clients, friends, workshop participants, taxi drivers. Men and women of every race and every class beam at me and say something supportive. When the connection gets made, it is more than the simple Democrat-to-Democrat connection I’ve had in other elections with other buttons. This is about an entire ideology, and it’s about a new vision of what’s possible, a new vision of what the future could be. We are not just excited about a person or a platform, but about a whole new sense of possibility, a new image of how the world could be. I believe that this man (“that one”) has the complexity and compassion to lead us into a new relationship with the world, with ourselves, and he has the intelligence and the nuance to know how to make vision become real. And those of us who wear the buttons or the t-shirts or the bumper sticker, we’re not just supporting the same candidate, we’re supporting the same vision of the future, the same hope for our children and our planet.
Every once in a while, I stop and think, not about Obama’s brilliance, not about his compassion, not about the way he has the potential to transform our country’s image in the world. Every once in a while I think, this is a black man running for the most powerful office in the world. Even typing that now on a crowded Metro makes my eyes fill with tears. I want to celebrate: how beautiful is it that this country—which has struggled so long, so painfully, so violently with the issue of race—can finally put a black man in the oval office. How magical is it that with one election day, we can forever more put the first-ness of this behind us and know that we are not so blinded by race—or our unquestioned ambivalence about race—so as to pass up this chance at a man who could be an extraordinary president. Barack Obama is an existence proof, not only for the possibility of a black man in the oval office, but for the people in majority to have a new relationship to those who are not part of the majority. He is a brilliant person in his own right, and he is a symbol of how far we have come.
And sometimes I get shaky with rage about it all. How could we be so backwards, here in the new millennium, so that this is the first time this has happened? How is it that we have cut out of our field such a significant portion of our population? And then I think about how women have not been in this position before, an even larger percentage of the capable population than African Americans, and I am disgusted. What is wrong with this place? How have we failed as a people? How far do we still have to go?
And of course we have farther to go in some places than others. Jamie noted that in some parts of the country, you can’t wear an Obama button and still feel safe, and that an Obama sign in front of your house will get your house egged or molested in some other way. I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel the kind of racial hatred that clearly overcomes some of my fellow Americans. I can’t imagine the fear and loathing that comes up for people who worry about the redistribution of money to those less fortunate, as though that were a crime rather than a promise. I lie awake at night worrying about his safety and feeling somehow responsible for his daughters, who will become all of our daughters when he is our president. I am distressed that this is still a possibility, that there are still people who can believe that their racist perspective is somehow a legitimate American way to be.
But it looks like those people are in an increasing minority. Obama is not just keeping up with the last couple of white guys who ran for president; he is changing the electoral map and igniting a generation—or two or three. And from the response to my button, he is doing it with all kinds of people all over the country. I will leave this country believing that it is a more exciting place than the nation I left last April, that it is filled with people—quite possibly a majority of people—who share my values and my hopes for the future. I have not thought that in a long time. I suppose I just had to push the right button to find out the truth.
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