The Power of the Black Vote

 

By BROOKLYNE GIPSON

 

 

A year ago I attended a Barack Obama rally at Rancho Cienega park near Dorsey High School. I went because I had heard whispers here and there about this relatively unknown black Senator from Illinois who was rumored to be a viable candidate for the US presidency. So I trekked over to the rally with raised eyebrow because I wasn’t so sure that he’d be the candidate for me. Ethnicity has never and will never be a qualifying factor in the decisions I make, so there was no need for me to get too excited about the idea of a potential black President of the United States at the time.    However, I left the rally in awe. I was impressed by Barack’s now arguably over-saturated message of bringing change to American politics. I was relieved at the absence of hyper-racial Sharptonian-style politics and delighted to hear messages of true American unity (“It’s not about red states or blue states, it’s about the United States!”). I was charmed— as have many Americans in the last few months— by his relatable, personable character. I was pleased with each and every point that Obama made in his stump speech as I felt that his moderate and practical views were totally in line with mine.  I was sold.  By the time Sister Sledge’s “We are Family” was blaring from the loud speaker, sending visitors off, I was already on my cell phone telling my friend who had missed the opportunity to go with me just how amazing and inspiring that 45 minutes had been for me. It was a watershed moment.Obama left the rally with not only my total support but I was surprisingly left with something as well— a rejuvenated level of hope and belief. I knew that this was going to happen for him. Naturally my excitement over the endearing candidate was met with a lot of skepticism among my family and friends as I quickly hit the pavement running on informing them about Barack. I heard the exact responses that Obama had forecasted in his speech. “A black man, for president? America is just not ready.” To which I replied, “But are you ready?” Then I’d hear, “White people aren’t going to vote for him,” to which I replied “but will you vote for him? He needs your support too.” Most disheartening of all, was a close friend of mine who said “The way I see it, from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, there hasn’t been any real change in my life so why vote? My vote doesn’t count anyway.” And so on, and so on. In those early stages it was an uphill battle to get people motivated, to believe, to even pay attention. But hope prevailed. Almost one year later, I sat at my desk and opened the (March 12) Los Angeles Times newspaper and came across an article titled “Black Vote Fuels Obama Primary Win” by Mark Z. Barabak who commented on Barack’s latest victory in the Mississippi primaries, pointing out that: “Overall, black voters accounted for roughly half the vote…Nearly complete returns late Tuesday in Mississippi showed Obama with 61 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 37 percent. The high black turnout helped Obama beat Clinton among voters across a range of education and incomes.”After reading the article, I sat back and marveled at the power of the black vote.

 

At this point, I feel like Obama has already accomplished more than most black people ever thought was possible and instilled such a high quality of hope and belief in not only the African American community but the entire American community that even if this were the end of the road, he’ll still be revered as a hero.

At this point, he’s made it so that there is no excuse. The lights have dimmed on the people who boast their reasons for not voting. The negativity of the nay-sayers has waned with each victory and the skeptics have turned their attention to an evident truth that their hesitance hadn’t allowed them to realize before- there’s power in the black vote. I look forward to the day when my future child inevitably writes the black history month report on a true American hero— Barack Obama and I hope that it inspires them to hope, to believe, and to know that the sky is the limit and that the glass ceiling exists only in their mind.From Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”: “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? …I’m not talking about blind optimism here—  the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; … the hope of a mill-worker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!”