A new era dawning in U.S politics
Presidential nominee Barack Obama on Capitol Hill
There’s an old saying that the darkest hour of the night is just before dawn. And I can’t help thinking that the same might be true for US politics.
I wonder if the US hadn’t reached an all time low with eight years of Bush presidency, whether the country would be ready for a black president (or woman vice president).
It is understandable that there has been a racial schism in the US over the last one hundred and fifty years or so.
This stems from the fact that most of today’s African Americans are descendants of slaves brought over in the ninetienth century to work in the cotton plantations.
The slaves were treated as animals, performing back-breaking work with no hope of emancipation.
They were also illiterate, which was probably the single most important factor in keeping them down in a rapidly industrializing nation.
This ensured that when slavery ended, African Americans remained de facto second-class citizens.
What’s surprising and frightening to know is that the majority of African Americans only got the right to vote in the 1960s.
This was as the result of many draconian and disadvantageous policies that kept African Americans from being able to exercise their right to vote.
This makes it even more amazing that today a black man is standing for presidency in the US.
It shows that a country that has been fundamentally racist towards African Americans through much of the twentieth century has come a long way.
Of course unlike Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama does not trace his lineage back to the slave trade of West Africa.
However this scarcely matters. He is still black, and he represents the hopes of so many Americans for a fairer more inclusive America.
It shows that if a black man can ascend to the top job in the nation, then the days of a racist, divided society and deliberate social and economic disadvantage are over.
Likewise, McCain has announced his running mate to be 44-year-old Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. And this effectively does the same thing for women as it helps to shatter the glass ceiling that exists in so many spheres of public life.
The vice president is the immediate successor should something happen to the president in office. And the vice president can go on to run for presidency should they want to.
So whatever the outcome of November’s presidential election one thing is for sure: change is coming to America.
And all I can say is thank God for that!
