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Written by Sonia Morgan
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Tuesday, 11 November 2008 |
It has been a long and storied journey, from the days when Blacks in America were assigned to the cotton fields, journeying through a time of Jim Crow – separate and unequal schools, restrooms, movie theatres, hospitals, water fountains... to civil rights. In short, being Black then, made you a second class citizen and the prospect of achieving equal education and equal opportunities was but a dream a la Martin Luther King Jr.
But glimmers of hope emerged over the years, as Black people fought through the civil rights era paving the way for post-civil rights achievements. Some Blacks even dominated predominantly white fields – the likes of Oprah Winfrey, a pioneer in entertainment; Tiger Woods, golf great and the Williams sisters who excelled in tennis – after all, even today, it is still a struggle for a Black man to get into a country club. Be that as it may, sports and entertainment seemed to be the popular areas in which Blacks stood at the pinnacle.
Now, with Barack Obama becoming the 44th President of the United States of America, the sky is the limit for the African American community. His ascension to the highest office in the land proves that Black people can no longer just dream, but in fact, our dreams can become reality.
The bar has been set, the pinnacle has been reached, the glass ceiling has been shattered; no longer can Black people say it can’t be done.
Surely, the road has never been easy and will never be when Black is the color of your skin; but the reality is it has been done. We as Black people should now take the cue, from President-elect Obama, who demonstrates that despite the odds of being Black, there is a pathway to success.
Obama’s success epitomizes what hard work and dedication can accomplish. Rather than using his skin color as a deterrent, he recognizes the obstacles it poses, and uses this to propel himself to be the best, knowing that for Blacks mediocrity is never good enough.
Black people have long been stereotyped as lazy, laidback underachievers and while some have risen above this stigma, many are still carrying this burden, this “mental slavery” that we have scarcely emancipated ourselves from, using it as a reason for not performing. And this is not without some sliver of truth. Historically, there were some things that Black people in America conceivably could never achieve, and the Presidency of the United States was markedly one of them.
But today is a new day, a new era has dawned and now Barack Obama stands as a beacon of hope, giving us the template from which we should work – knowing that it is possible. But, we should also be cognizant that having a Black president in no way totally erases the racism that has been so woven in the fabric of our society. To get rid of it, means we might have to unravel the very threads that hold it together. This is a start, and by no means are all our problems solved, but if the phenomenon that is Barack Obama has taught us anything as a race and a nation, it is that the impossible can happen if we have the ‘audacity of hope’.
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