Although he watched the phenomenon unfold on television Tuesday night, Chet Sisk didn’t feel its full impact until morning.
When he left home for a business trip giving leadership lectures, he looked at America through new eyes — because a country that elects its first black president seems somehow transformed in the light of a new day.
“As I step out of my house today,” said Sisk, who is black, “I, too, will be looked at differently.”
Over nearly two years, the candidacy of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama chiseled away at and finally shattered the nation’s most daunting racial barrier — one that separated generations of Americans from the symbolic promise of unfettered opportunity.
In raw cultural terms, the campaign’s crescendo represented more than a seismic political shift. It jolted historical notions of race, created new expectations, hopes and fears, and struck chords that reverberated everywhere from the international stage to the country’s most enduring axiom.
“Folks have always said anybody can be president, yet we continued to elect the same kind of people over and over,” said Dwight Jones, Colorado’s first black commissioner of education. “This changes the dynamics.”
He sees a well-educated black president — Obama lists Harvard Law among his academic credentials — creating a new template especially for black males. Over time, that influence could begin to impact the disturbing number of high-school dropouts.
“I’ve worked at so many schools where it’s not cool to be smart,” Jones said. “We’ve been saying for years, when you can get an African- American president who’s well trained and very intellectual, that will transfer to African-American males — who are dropping out in droves. On the education side, we’re hoping to build on that.”
Obama’s campaign largely steered clear of race, and the ideas advanced by the candidate often have little to do with the racial identity of the man. But many who viewed Obama’s victory as a triumph over race also feel compelled to ask if race will in some way affect his actions and choices as president.
“All of these things are bound to have some implications on how people judge things,” said former Gov. Richard Lamm, co-director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver.
“But of all the problems facing him, I don’t think (race) will be an operational one. At some point in history, he’ll be judged on what the first black president produced, but that won’t get in his way.”
Advancing the conversation
Lamm figures Obama’s election will lead to more conversation on race, not less, as he urges the country beyond the civil rights movement. And as a black president, he stands well-positioned to speak to the black community on topics such as out-of-wedlock births, as he did in a widely lauded campaign speech in Philadelphia.
Obama already has sent one important message stemming from his competence in managing perhaps the most sophisticated campaign in U.S. political history, said Federico Peña, Denver’s first Latino mayor and a former Cabinet member in the Clinton administration.
“But the second point is going to be his actual presidency,” he added. “That will break the myth that still exists that minorities are not qualified to meet extraordinary challenges as a CEO or head of an organization. I think Barack Obama will shatter those once and for all.”
In Fort Collins, where the Colorado State University College Republicans were dismantling their campaign headquarters, chairwoman Chelsey Penoyer, a 22-year-old senior, said she’s fascinated by how the Obama campaign energized minority voters, but flustered by the continuing chatter about race.
In her speech communications classes, students have discussed the significance of the first black president, she said, but that sells Obama’s other qualities short.
“The first of everything is great — it’s always a landmark thing,” she said. “But I really think where we are as a country, we need to get past that and focus on the positive qualities we need to rely on him for in leading the country here and abroad.”
Some see an Obama presidency striving to improve conditions for minorities and the working poor, but not because skin color will help get it done.
Herman Malone, who described his legal battle against what he believed was corporate racism in his book, “Lynched by Corporate America,” predicted that a charismatic black president’s leadership will influence boardrooms across the country.
“Very subtle changes will be taking place throughout the business community,” said the 61-year-old Malone.
He sees major corporations more thoroughly embracing diversity in their hiring as a trickle-down effect of having a racial minority holding the most powerful position in the world.
Beyond that, he envisions people swept up in a tide of idealism, transcending race, that has been missing for decades.
“We’ve gotten to the brink of disaster in this country because, ‘It’s all about me,’ ” he said.
Doors open for everyone
Ideals transcend race, said Sally Yerger, a union activist and housing specialist in the Colorado civil rights division. Obama is right because he has studied economic justice — period.
“He’s dedicated and intelligent and will make a difference regardless of the color of his skin,” said Yerger, who is white. “(People) voted for him because they think he was more qualified, and he’d bring change. The fact that he’s black is just icing on the cake. He’s the tipping point, where maybe it’s not going to matter anymore.”
National labor and ethnic leaders said they don’t expect Obama’s presidency to look different just because he is a black president.
“Of course he’s African-American, you can’t take that away, but he’s looking to lead America as a whole,” said United Farm Workers president Arturo Rodriguez.
Still, Obama’s election remains vitally important to Latinos across the United States, even though minority groups often resist being lumped together as alternative voices, said Ramon del Castillo, chairman of the Chicana and Chicano studies department at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
“His election sends the message that doors are open for everybody,” Castillo said. “Not everybody is going to be able to raise $750 million for a campaign, but the doors are open in a metaphorical sense.”
But the message that doors are open in America does not wipe out the continuing need for affirmative action, Castillo added. Some Latinos believe that their growing share of America’s population also presents the threat of creating a “permanent underclass” of low-paying jobs, and a black president will likely be mindful of that.
“I don’t believe it is an equal playing field yet,” Castillo said.
The Rev. Leon Kelly, longtime force behind Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, sees the election results impacting youth who have, in many cases, blamed their descent into criminal activity and violence on intractable racism.
“As kids, we used to say that as a black man you cannot get ahead because the white man always has his foot on your neck,” Kelly said. “But you cannot tell me anymore that you can’t accomplish certain things because of the color of your skin. You can’t tell me you can’t get ahead because you didn’t have a father in your life. You might still have to deal with elements of struggle, but you can’t tell me anymore that it can’t be done.”
Fears of hate-group backlash
For all that a black man in the Oval Office represents, the landmark election comes with the pitfall of inflated expectations, Kelly added.
“Even from the black community, now it’s like we have a new messiah,” he said. “Somebody who mirrors us. We expect for him to be sympathetic to our cause. We have to be careful of that.”
Heightened expectations may be the most benign of the dangers that, even years since the advent of the civil rights movement, still cloud the rise of a black candidate to the White House.
The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups and now braces for the possibility that a confluence of political, social and demographic factors could aggravate racial enmity, said director of intelligence Mark Potok.
“No question this is a great moment in our country’s history,” Potok said of Obama’s victory. “Despite 250 years of slavery, a century of Jim Crow and more than 3,000 lynchings in our past, we’ve come to an extraordinary place. But we’re really worried about a perfect storm of factors that could engender backlash and help it grow.”
He cites immigration, rising unemployment and shifting demographics that project the end of white majority in the U.S. after 2040.
“Now we have a black president,” he said. “For some people, all of those together make them feel they’ve completely lost the world they grew up in, that they’ve been robbed of the country their forbearers built.”
Even as much of America celebrates the racial progress that has vaulted a black man to the presidency, some remain acutely aware that prejudice is easily transferrable.
Abdur-Rahim Ali, imam at the Northeast Denver Islamic Center, notes that some who wanted to derail Obama’s candidacy spread what to them was the most vile rumor possible: He’s really a Muslim.
“Colin Powell really addressed that just perfectly,” Ali said. “He said, ‘So what if he’s a Muslim? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim?’ I want Muslim children to aspire to be president someday too. Not just Muslim, but all children who are Americans should be aspiring for that office.”
Watched by the world
Other nations have watched the unfolding presidential campaign with heightened interest, anticipating how the new leader of the free world might approach foreign affairs.
The impact of the election will be immense, said DU’s Lamm.
“I just don’t think any of us have any idea the magnitude of this substantive act in a symbolic context,” he said. “This is an intellectual Marshall Plan magnified by 10. This is, for the whole world, a symbolic gift that undercuts the negativism of Bush and the Iraq war. It won’t silence it, but in one democratic act, we’ve put ourselves two-thirds back into the game.”
Worldwide reaction to Obama’s candidacy has at times come through a racial filter, said Ved Nanda, director of the International Legal Studies program at DU. Foreign leaders and average citizens certainly appreciate that Obama is black, but they seem most encouraged by what he is not — namely, George W. Bush.
“Everywhere in Europe, that seems the most important thing — that he is a change from Bush,” said Nanda, adding that his recent travels in Africa, India and Europe drove home just how much Bush administration policies have hurt America’s standing in the world.
Race does become more important in Africa and India, Nanda added. Indians know much about America’s struggle with racism over the centuries and compare it to their own abuses under British colonial rule.
On the eve of his trip abroad, Chet Sisk, the leadership lecturer, spent much of Tuesday night watching election returns with a crowd in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. At one point, he took a phone call — from his tearful mother, who witnessed the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. She kept repeating, “I can’t believe it . . . I can’t believe it.”
Her voice brought home just how close the nation remains to its history of institutionalized racial prejudice — and how its attitudes and outlook have shifted with the election of its first black president.
“We were a stone’s throw away from the madness of segregation and lynching,” Sisk said. “It seems such a rapid change that we’re still catching our breath and wrapping our arms around the idea. We figured we needed another generation for this culture to transform.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com
