Obama Victory

I know that not everyone is celebrating an individual candidate's victory today, but we can all celebrate a victory over racism. I have that calm feeling I get when I think that the world works right, the feeling that I get when I live on the coasts, when I see people of color as bankers, and teachers, and business owners, when I feel like it is just as likely that a non-white person will decide my fate as it is that a fellow white one will. The feeling that our society works at least a little the way we say it does -- that a good idea, intelligence, hard work, luck can pay off for anyone.

Living in the Midwest was difficult. African Americans in Wisconsin have some of the highest rates of poverty in the country. In Madison's sea of white people, there were a few black professors and more black poor. Blacks were practically absent in the middle class. This can seem to leave one with the intellectual options of blaming "the system" in some way or blaming African Americans themselves, leaving individual European American attitudes off the hook. While I believe that the sources of African American poverty are complicated and can't be entirely explained by individual choices and bias, I like the blog Stuff White People Like as a way to see the white culture I'm swimming in.

I'm glad so many of us voted for hope, hoping we can heal some wounds, hoping we can move forward together.