ETHOS

By Joshua Bennett

When I was roughly 9 years old, i proudly declared to my older sister that after mulling it over in my head for the past decade or so, I had finally decided what I wanted to “be” when I grew up- President of the United States. It seemed like a rather glamorous position to me at the time, what with the king-like authority, cool-shaped office, 24-hour on-call posse of armed guards in black suits, etc. and besides that, it just seemed way cooler than being a paleontologist (my former dream career). Yet still, despite the amount of time, energy, and critical thought I’d put into my newfound aspiration, I was met not with praise from my eldest sibling, but rather discouragement. On the evening of my ever-so-eloquent verbal declaration of my intention to pursue the position of Commander-In-Chief, with all the careful delicacy of a falling anvil, my sister unflinchingly looked me in the eyes, and told me that no Black man would ever become President. No shot. Not a chance. Ever.

What a difference 10 years makes.

As of 2 days ago, Barack Obama took a crucial step toward (in what would be a first for anyone I’ve ever met) proving my sister wrong, and becoming the first African American individual to ever be elected to the highest political office in the land. Though here at Ethos Barack Obama is regularly excoriated for his historically ignorant American idealism, inability to use his unique position of power to provide a space for radical discourse, and pretty much anything else that our collegiate, overly critical minds can come up with, I’ve been thinking that perhaps we need to cut the brotha some some slack. Wake up, people. This is America. The Democratic nominee is a Black man and all I keep hearing is constant criticism from White and Black folks alike of everything from Barack’s masculinity and perceived toughness to his critical intelligence and credentials for the presidency.

Really? There are “credentials” for being president now? Sorry, not buying it. Like it or not, politics at the presidential level have little to do with an individual’s ability to make tangible change appear out of thin air. In fact, I would be willing to argue that it has nothing to do with that at all. This election is a popularity contest. Barack is charismatic, an excellent orator, and has the most unique backstory of any presidential candidate I’ve ever read about. He is a breathing, walking embodiment of the American dream that people born on the wrong side of the poverty line have talked about their whole lives and never seen actualized. Men and women of all shades have lived and died without for a second ever imagining a world where the beautiful moment we are nonchalantly watching pass before our eyes was even possible. My parents are perfect examples.

My Dad grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He was the first Black male to ever attend and graduate from his high school. In addition to balancing an increased workload with the constant racial slurs being thrown at him by classmates, he had to battle the everyday struggles of Jim Crow law in a city that relegated him to the second-class citizenship from the day he was born. Months after he graduated, my father watched the Klan burn his high school to the ground to eradicate all evidence that any colored folks had ever sullied its hallways with their presence. He’s now a mail handler for the U.S. Postal Service.

My Mom’s story is a little different. Youngest of 6 children, grew up in a tenement in the South Bronx around the same time that the arrival of heroin turned New York’s inner-city neighborhoods into war zones. She was the first of her siblings to go to college, and has done incredibly well since. She recently retired from her career as a successful accountant, and every day still has to deal with the difficulty of being the only Black woman at her job.

These types of stories are the reason that Barack Obama’s nomination is monumentally important in ways that we will not truly understand until years down the road. My parents and sister alike never thought that they would see the day when a person of color was being touted by the masses, individuals both Black and White, as the next great leader of the wayward nation we live in. No, Barack is not a revolutionary. If he is elected, policemen will still brutalize and murder Black men, Hollywood will still typecast African American actors, and the poorest people in this country will still be Black and Brown women. These are the negative aspects that come from living not only in a capitalist global framework, but in a country that so self-righteously daily goes against the values it claims to be inherent in its very foundation.

With that said, anyone who is expecting Barack to be King, Chavez, Kennedy or some mix of all three will be thoroughly disappointed if he wins the upcoming election. But for the people like me, the dreamers, the patient ones, the Black men with little boys inside them that wanted nothing more than the chance to be what every little kid wants to be, Barack is little less than everything we hoped for. Yeah, he’s imperfect. But with all his flaws he is still leagues ahead of what we’ve got right now, and what we’ve had for a while. So until we eradicate the two-party system, find a cure for hatred or decide to stop waging war on innocent countries and intangible concepts, I will be screaming support at the top of my lungs for the only candidate in recent memory that has made me feel like a new vision for this country was possible.

There’s only one question left to be asked: Do you smell what Barack is cookin?