'Skids had been greased' before Obama's election
But Obama was elected on his plans for country, not because of his race
Gordon D. Morgan
Issue date: 11/14/08 Section: Opinion
One young lady said she was thrilled because the election of Obama meant greater hope for her. I responded that it is the plan that Obama wants to put in place to increase the prosperity of all Americans and that planning is not based on race. Other candidates could claim the same or different projects and that would mean action, not race. A man's race does not determine his likability.
I tried to make the case that Obama did not reach the White House completely by own actions. The skids have been greased for him from the time the first slave said, "I am not taking this crap any longer," and struck for his freedom. The Civil War, the struggles for freedom, the civil rights contests and much else greased the skids for Obama, though he may not know it.
I did not get a chance to tell them, but one of the big change makers was the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, which had been preceded by the desegregation of the military forces, which itself, had many forerunners. All of these changes added up to the achievements by Obama.
Brown was important because it allowed young people to go to school together in numbers, associating in the process. They soon were living together in the same neighborhoods and communities. They ended up being friends of each other, for a large part, instead of people who lived on different sides of the tracks. All of this togetherness meant that people were no longer strangers, though there were some that never made the change.
I did not have time to tell them that some of my folks, even my father and some uncles his age, never felt the impact of the civil rights changes. They never slept in an integrated motel room because they never had the money to make those choices. They never ate at an integrated hamburger stand because they did not have the money to buy hamburgers. For them there was no change from what they had experienced while sharecropping on the farm long before the 1940s.
There are people who will not be able to change from what they were before when their worlds were entirely separate. They did not have the advantage of going to school with people of other ethnicities, of working with them, of serving with them on bases of equality. What they learned in their separate communities about other people is what carries them today.
But there are so many people who have had the experience outlined above and have learned that people of different persuasions and complexions are not all that different from themselves.
Gordon D. Morgan is a professor of sociology at the UA.
I tried to make the case that Obama did not reach the White House completely by own actions. The skids have been greased for him from the time the first slave said, "I am not taking this crap any longer," and struck for his freedom. The Civil War, the struggles for freedom, the civil rights contests and much else greased the skids for Obama, though he may not know it.
I did not get a chance to tell them, but one of the big change makers was the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, which had been preceded by the desegregation of the military forces, which itself, had many forerunners. All of these changes added up to the achievements by Obama.
Brown was important because it allowed young people to go to school together in numbers, associating in the process. They soon were living together in the same neighborhoods and communities. They ended up being friends of each other, for a large part, instead of people who lived on different sides of the tracks. All of this togetherness meant that people were no longer strangers, though there were some that never made the change.
I did not have time to tell them that some of my folks, even my father and some uncles his age, never felt the impact of the civil rights changes. They never slept in an integrated motel room because they never had the money to make those choices. They never ate at an integrated hamburger stand because they did not have the money to buy hamburgers. For them there was no change from what they had experienced while sharecropping on the farm long before the 1940s.
There are people who will not be able to change from what they were before when their worlds were entirely separate. They did not have the advantage of going to school with people of other ethnicities, of working with them, of serving with them on bases of equality. What they learned in their separate communities about other people is what carries them today.
But there are so many people who have had the experience outlined above and have learned that people of different persuasions and complexions are not all that different from themselves.
Gordon D. Morgan is a professor of sociology at the UA.
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