Prometheus 6

Last night Melissa Harris Lacewell said an interestiing thing on Bill Moyers' show.

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: I suppose the greatest thought I was having as I was watching the inauguration of Barack Obama was my sense that I didn't even know I wanted a black president. I wasn't particularly attached to the idea of an African American in the White House. It seemed just sort of symbolic. And yet I was moved at a very profound level about how this made me feel connected to my country in a way that I'd never fully felt connected before. It was an astonishing feeling.

I'm hearing a lot of that.

My primary interest in watching Obama is to see what his decisions are, how he will impact policy and law, what type of justices he will appoint, stuff like that. To me, the nation, or that section of it in which I am active, is a field of activity. I can no more be a patriot than I can bond to  the rules of bid whist. I haven't been swept up personally by anything I've seen, probably because long ago I accepted citizenship as a contract rather than an affectionate bond, out of necessity.

PATRICIA WILLIAMS: I think it changes the self-perception of African Americans. Obviously nothing is going to change life overnight. But I think that it is too easy to dismiss the symbolism of this particular election. It's too easy to dismiss the sense of investment of identity. I hear over and over again people, not just African Americans but particularly African Americans, who felt so disenfranchised for so long, feeling so deeply, deeply American.

People saying that they picked up a flag and waved it for the first time in their lives and waved it with such enthusiasm. And not in a sense that this is just an African American administration but that they feel united to all Americans, that he represents all Americans. And in that, the constituency of African Americans feel connected to other constituencies from whom they felt quite segregated and dispossessed.

I really wish I remembered where I heard the interview wherein someone said Black people can't be denied access to the government anymore because "we are the government!" I heard that and thought, "WE?" And it was definitely an inclusive "we," this woman knew who "we" were.

I think very few people are as neutral about sharing some identity space with a President as I am. On Saturday in the Washington Post, a woman talks about the impact Obama's election has had on her son.

Barack Obama is many things to many people. Among the groups claiming a special resonance with him are mothers like me. Who has not seen The Photo (can it be that there is only one?) of toddler Barack and his young mother? His memoir may be titled "Dreams From My Father," but in the preface, Obama says that his mother "was the single constant in my life" and that "what is best in me I owe to her." She brought him up largely on her own.

This is significant for me as an unmarried mother of a preteen son, and it surely resonates for other mothers raising their children without dads. Growing up without a father, my son has at times struggled to feel "normal." All children struggle with that; of course, some struggle more than others. My son, who is white, was startled a few years ago to learn that his best buddy felt that he didn't belong anywhere because his dad was a black African and his mom a white American. My son didn't see the issue of race as a problem -- to him, they were a perfect family.

For my son, the issue is fatherlessness.

This woman and her son are white, she is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. so they aren't economically stressed. Yet it seems her son still benefits from sharing identity space with the President of the United States of America.

Remarkable.

This...not economic policy, foreign affairs, or shifts of power among the political classes...is the discussion we're having in the Black communities. And that is not a change.