I Hope

Yes, he did!

For 65 years presidents have tried and failed to pass healthcare reform. Every one knew that the system was broken, that the insurance companies had the American people over a proverbial barrel. This president is the first to achieve what he said he was going to do.

 

Pundits like Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchannan are crowing about the partisan nature of the vote, the ugliness of the politics. I think they're being disingenuous. Of course it was partisan. Of course it was ugly. That's what you get when the other side has no agenda other than to see you fail. When they have no interest in the needs of the people, only in their own reelection. When the protesters gathered use their first amendment protections to yell "nigger" and "faggot" at lawmakers walking into the Capitol.

Obama finally got past the bipartisan fairy tale. And the Democratics finally stepped up. This is historic. One former Bush speechwriter predicted it would be the GOP's waterloo. I don't know about that, but I hope the Democrats who voted for this bill run on the offensive in November's mid terms elections. I hope they hold healthcare reform up as the accomplishment that it truly is. I know the bill isn't perfect, but it gets us a long way to where we need to go. It's a start, a moment of vision and brilliance in the murky self-interest that is Washington.

 

And now the Republicans, the tea baggers, the far-right wingnuts are vowing to repeal the bill. Really? As Daily Kos asks: "What do you want to repeal first? Not discriminating against children with pre-existing conditions? Allowing children to stay on their parents insurance until they're 26? Insurance companies not being allowed to drop you if you get sick or capping the amount they'll pay if you have a catastrophic illness? Which ones are Republicans against? In other words, bring it on."

Gosh, I'm proud.

State of the Union

For the record, I believe in him. I believe he is doing the best he knows how. He's had a tough first year, and his eyes show it. They don't dance as much. They're harder, more weary. The circles under them are more deeply etched. And no wonder. The stony faces on the Republican side of the room said it all. What must he be dealing with behind the scenes? The really ugly stuff that we don't get to see (the stuff we do see is distasteful enough). I am concerned that the system of government is broken, that the way the legislature and political system are set up can produce nothing but grandstanding and deadlock. How frustrating it must be to try to actually do something for the people when your hands are tied by partisan career politicans who care nothing for the people, who care about nothing but making sure you do not succeed. But I do still believe in this man. I don't always agree with him, I don't always understand the decisions he makes. But he is tough and principled. I trust his intelligence. I trust his heart. I trust his intent. And for me, that is enough.

Playing with Sevita

The president and his niece Sevita during the family's Martha's Vineyard vacation last summer. Babies and children love this man. Look at the trust and delight in little Sevita's pose. (Photographed by Pete Souza on August 25, 2009)

Happy Birthday, Barack!

Today is our President's birthday. I reminded my mom of this as we talked on the phone this morning. She said, "Really? I must say an extra prayer for him. I love him so much. He is like my own son." Despite the noise and knee-jerk opposition from factions on the political right, there continues to be so much love and pride and good feeling pouring out for our president. I believe this is based on the core decency that most people sense in the man. All six of my aunts, every one of them past 80, pray for him every single day. I do hope all the prayers going up for him form a field of protection around him and his family as he strives to do that difficult job the best way he knows how. Happy Birthday, Barack! I guess we're on a first name basis now that my mom has adopted you as her spiritual son. (Photo by Peter Turnley)

The Tape of the World

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” —W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

"I do not know a single Black man in this country, from any walk of life, who does not think that the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates in his home by a White police officer was not about race." —Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for The Washington Post

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Two weeks ago Black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested in his home by White police officer Jim Crowley (the irony of that name is almost too much to contemplate). The professor was arrested after showing identification proving that he was indeed in his own home and was not a burgler. Gates had returned from a trip to find his front door jammed. He asked his cab driver to help him force it open. A woman passing by called the cops to say, she wasn't sure, but there might be a burglary in progress. The woman never mentioned race.

Officer Crowley showed up to find Professor Gates already in his home. He asked for identification, which the professor produced, proving he was indeed the occupant of that house. Crowley then proceeded to treat Gates as a suspect: Hand on holster, he asked the professor to step outside. Gates, a veteran like the rest of us of too many tales of Black men wrongly shot by cops, refused. Some reports say the professor grew irate, but in fact, the tape of the incident released by police reveals no such thing. He merely protested being accosted and bossed in his own home. But at that moment, despite all his accomplishments, he became just an uppity Negro who offended a White cop by not showing proper deference. Out came the handcuffs.

If you are Black in America, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gates's arrest was about nothing more than affronted racial egos. On both sides.

The charges were ultimately dropped, and the Cambridge police apologized to the professor, evidence of their assessment that Gates was wrongly detained. Then President Obama, in a rare instance of less-than-careful (albeit truthful) speech, called the arrest "stupid." And the media frenzy began. On Fox News, Glen Beck declared that the President was racist. On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough reflected that what happened to Gates would never have happened to a White professor proven to be in his own home. Cops in Cambridge groused that the President was hostile to law enforcement. And on and on.

Today the President, the professor and the police officer will sit down for beers in the White House garden to try to work out a peace. I have no doubt they will achieve some sort of resolution, that they will each leave there with a better understanding of how this happened, and of one another. As for the rest of America, I'm not so sure.

The whole unfortunate saga brings three things to mind for me.

1) When my son was younger, I taught him that if he ever got lost, he should not seek out a male cop. Instead, he should find an older woman who seemed like a sympathetic aunt or grandmother and ask for her help. My reasoning was an older woman would be more likely to stay with him until he was well and truly safe. A male cop, on the other hand, was a crapshoot. He might be a good sort, or he might be subject to conscious or unconscious stereotypes and see nothing in my son but a present or future criminal.

2) My son runs track. He is a hurdler and a 200-meter and 400-meter sprinter. I have always encouraged him to train on the fields at his school rather than in the public park near us, because I secretly worry that when cops see any Black male running, all they see is a suspect.

3) Many people asked Michelle Obama in the weeks leading up to her husband's declaring himself a candidate for president, whether she wasn't terrified that he would be shot. Indeed, the night Obama won the Iowa Caucus, my own mother was anything but happy. "They're going to shoot him," she said worriedly. "I don't want him to run. I don't want him to win." "Mom, that's just fear talking," I told her. "We can't sit still and let our fears run rampant. We'll never take a step forward." (Bold words coming from noisy-brained me!) Michelle Obama apparently agreed. Her answer to those unsettling questions? "As a Black man, Barack could be shot just going to the store," she said. "So no, we don't give in to those fears."

Post-racial America? Not yet.

Does your hair feel the same as mine?

The President apparently offered his head so the child of a staffer could check if their hair felt the same way. Sweet. (Photo by Pete Souza)

The Game Changer

I just need to pause to note, with a measure of awe, that we have a Black president, and it is becoming less of a big deal day by day. We have a brilliant and committed man as president. A loving family man with a lively sense of humor. A supreme politician able to lower the temperature among rivals, and able to articulate the reason and vision behind his decisions.

Yet he is also a Black man in the White House, an event that even the most optimistic among us never thought we'd see. And I find it so remarkable that this amazing fact is becoming less and less remarkable every day. It makes my heart swell with wonder that we have arrived at this place. But while it is no longer such a big deal, it is still a game changer.

Little Black girls can look at the First Lady and her daughters and know that no matter how dark their own skin, how far outside of mainstream beauty standards they stand, they, too, can be stunning and accomplished and celebrated and loved. Little Black boys can look at the President and see at last a limitless horizon for themselves, and a reason to reach for the once seemingly impossible dream.

And Black families, so often portrayed as fractured and dysfunctional, can look at the Obamas and feel vindicated in the knowledge that there have been families like this all along, quietly loving and raising and educating their children, even as they hold down jobs and do their part in their communities. At last, we can see ourselves reflected. Part of the fabric of a society. Woven through. Both remarkable and unremarkable. As it should be.

100 Days

To mark the 100th day in office of President Barack Obama, I'm sharing some of my favorite behind-the-scenes images by photographer Callie Shell. I am so proud of our president and his family, and I'm proud of the country for electing this stellar human being. Will he get everything right? Not possible. But I trust his best intentions and analysis and intelligence and humanity, and for me, that is everything.

Conspiracy Theories

One of my coworkers stopped by my desk this morning, his brow creased. "Do you think," he said as he plopped himself in the chair opposite me, "that they're artificially suppressing Wall Street and the financial markets so Obama won't succeed?"

Ahh, I thought, the mysterious, ubiquitous they. Always a promising train to jump aboard. "I mean," my friend continued, his tone urgent, "could there be a cartel of politicians and businessmen out there who have rigged this game so he'll look like he failed?"

After the last eight years, I'd have to say game rigging is definitely a possibility. I do know this: The Republicans have closed ranks around a commitment to oppose everything our new president proposes. They will whine and complain and pitch fits on every news program that will book them, about the pork in the stimulus bill and welfare spending and so-called socialism, and they will offer up not one serviceable idea in return, and they will ignore that Obama is trying to do something for people who are hurting, doing the best he can, with more heart and smarts than the last guy who sat in his chair, but no, they, in fear of their political lives, would rather take down the country, take down even their own, all so that President Barack Obama won't appear to be the hero riding into town.

You can't shake hands if only one hand is extended. You can't be bipartisan all by yourself. But I'm not worried about Obama. He knows how to play the game. And as my mother likes to say, God isn't sleeping.

Hands