The Walls We Build

July 25, 2008
“The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races, and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
– Illinois Senator Barak Obama, speaking in Berlin on July 24, 2008

Tonight I’m thanking God for:

1. Illinois Senator Barak Obama’s arrival on the national, and now international, political scene as presumptive Democratic candidate for President in this November’s general election
(remember, he started his campaign from the Abraham Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois)

2. Being alive to see the United States of America finally have a person of African descent running for the highest political office in the land!

3. The long presidential primary season which is giving non-black cultures in America a chance to digest over time their introduction to black American culture through Senator Obama and the events of his campaign, and to begin to envision and accept the very real possibility of a mixed-race black man as President.

And so much more meaning this has for me, being from Chicago and a very active participant in the rainbow coalition that twice elected the late, great Mayor Harold Washington the first black mayor of Chicago. Harold came back to the Chicago scene – back from his long journey from Springfield to Washington – at a time when City government had been consistent only in its reinforcement of racial division through a system of distribution of spoils that totally neglected all non-white neighborhoods.

Not that there is ‘ebony-and-ivory’ perfect racial harmony here now; but it’s MUCH better than it has ever been. During Harold’s time, there was also great advancement of understanding among minority cultures – blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans. It was a significant time of successful, meaningful, down-in-the-trenches coalition building.

I remember last fall having an informal discussion with some of my black and mixed-race co-workers about Barak’s chances to become the presidential candidate of a major party. Every one of my co-workers argued vehemently with me that Barak could only hope to become Hillary’s running mate – I was the hold-out who believed that perhaps our time was coming on a national level.

This is a huge time for white America; and I’m holding my breath! Can it be that one of the lessons from the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright incidents during the last several months, is the recognition that all cultures have “hidden discourse” – those ‘truths’ that they whisper among themselves, within the safety of their own “walls” – that can only seem embarrassing or absurd to ‘outsiders’? Rev. Wright held up a mirror for white America; can we see? Can we tear down the very walls we have built? Can Barak's candidacy help every culture of America – especially white America – hear the ‘Wake up!’ call, like the closing message in Spike Lee's School Daze?