OBAMA RALLY ELECTION NIGHT NOTES
NOVEMBER 17, 2008
Rockaway Beach, New York City

A former exchange student in West Berliin reflects on the changes in American attitudes toward race.

John Veit: Freelance Writer and Independent Film Maker

Like President-elect Obama I am the son of a white mom and black dad. We were both adopted, raised in the seventies and eighties and our parents divorced. Our histories don't bear much in common beyond that but our reactions to a more racially polarized world are eerily similar.
I was raised by white, divorced adoptive parents in the upper middle class suburbs of Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. with my white brother. Growing up we moved a dozen or so times. My mostly white friends were usually marginalized by adoption, divorce, molestation, drugs or any combination thereof. Punkers, hippies, skateboarders and lacrosse players in the eighties and nineties didn't seem to care what color I was or who my parents were. I had few girlfriends back then as it seemed like black girls thought I was too white and few white girls were open-minded enough to date a black boy, let alone a proverbial "tragic mulatto." The fact that I was often bitter, drunk and stoned didn't help.
My adoptive parents weathered ignorant remarks. My brother defended me from Beantown bigots. Wherever our family landed there was explaining to do and a general resignation that we would not fit in. Time and time again I was reassured from well-intentioned white people that, even though I was black, I wasn't "rude like most niggers." I preferred this sort of honesty to hairy eyeballs or condescending, liberal gobbledygook.
In 1986 I was an high school exchange student in West Berlin. I was asked to sit in on an honors English class with a dozen or so students. The teacher, Frau Schulmann, did her graduate work at Columbia studying the black civil rights struggle in the early seventies. We read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," "Manchild in the Promised Land," "Lady Sings the Blues" and other Black American classics all year long. I was grateful for the opportunity as such tomes were largely ignored by my school in Pennsylvania but felt awkward being put on display and mined for "authentic black American experiences." I had never thought of my experiences growing up as being anything but unique.
My host grandfather from West Germany, a Third Reich soldier blinded by an American bomb, came by for Christmas. In order to explain my heritage and appearance my host father instructed him to grab hold of one of my grimy dreadlocks. He did so and found my hair "fascinating." We all shared a healthy laugh. I realized then that the confusion of racism might someday fade into history.
There was a tiny Black Student Union at my upper-middle-class WASP high school. At college (I went to five) BSU's morphed into Minority Student Associations. Unable to speak Ebonics or leave my non-minority parts at the door, I never joined either. The fact that I had white parents and, even worse, a white girlfriend, didn't ingratiate me with either group. For the record, I do not use the term African-Americans as it is offensive to white Africans who emigrate to the United States. Unless white Americans are willing to be called Euro-Asian-Americans I will stick to black and white. I eventually grew bored with racial politics and switched majors from sociology to international studies.
While writing about the World Bank I volunteered for environmental organizations, organized anarchist protests and helped Harlem students find grants for college. Unlike the president-elect I didn't have much taste for organizations and chose writing as a means to change what I didn't like. After writing about the environment and the world bank in college I landed a job at High Times magazine in 1992 covering the American war on drugs. As an ethnographer for the US Surgeon General's Office and the National Institute of Justice I worked to change how law enforcement treats drug offenders.
Like the president-elect I had turned to W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright's Outsider, James Baldwin's Rufus, Malcolm X, marijuana and booze. While the President-elect eventually gave up his late-night lifestyle I am still what young Barack Obama called in "Dreams From My Father" a "pothead," perhaps headed to "the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man." Even though I like pot I am inspired by Malcom X's "repeated acts of self-creation," as Obama called them, and still skateboard, surf, play bass in a punk rock band, make bizarre independent movies, and take photos. It's a fun life and I still cling to the "hope" I'll sell a book, movie or song and my financial situation will "change" for the better.
The 1995 OJ Simpson murder fiasco made walking around with a white woman a chore. Dozens of black Howard University students at a Parliament Funkadelic concert I was covering for High Times aped "OJ! OJ!" to my black dreadlocked friend and his white sweetheart as we crossed the campus a few days after the verdict. Back then it seemed people were more leery of what they couldn't explain. These days people seem less interested.
My pretty white girlfriend volunteered for the Obama campaign in Harlem. I visited her there on election night. The place was abuzz with hundreds of hopeful multi-cultural volunteers. Everyone was sweet, welcoming and nervous. We settled in and watched MSNBC's drab coverage on a sheet hung across a wall. As the states rolled in for Senator Obama cheers turned to a dull, happy throb.
At eleven o'clock nearly everyone erupted in raucous glee. The returns were in. The Republicans had been thoroughly trounced. Their era of hostility was, for now, over. Tears poured. People danced on Fredrick Douglas Boulevard. Delighted screams punctuated happy chants. Car horns blared as people screamed "Obama!" from apartment windows.
It started to sink in why people were so happy. It wasn't just that a black guy was elected President of the United States, it was what he had promised to do. The Iraq war might end soon. Sustainable development may become a priority. Perhaps the Supreme Court won't be filled with right-wing reactionaries for the next four years. It seems abortion rights will not be threatened. Americans abroad will no longer be seen as global pariahs as people everywhere love Obama. He even promised to take a more compassionate approach to a criminal justice system that keeps more black American men in jail than in college.
The rally in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Federal building on 125th St. and Malcolm X Boulevard was mobbed. People stood on trucks and street posts craning to see New York's first blind, black Governor on a twenty foot-high stage. Thousands more stared at a giant monitor tuned to CNN. We watched but could not hear Senator John McCain's concession speech. As Governor Sarah Palin rushed awkwardly off the stage to a hail of Harlem boos it started to sink in that a profound ideological shift was afoot.
I started looking around at the sea of mostly black faces. They were exultant, screaming and chanting their candidate's name. They couldn't have cared less that a black guy and a white girl were out on a date. If President-elect Obama's parents hadn't ignored the racists of their day none of the revelers would be there in the first place.