Obama Campaign Helped Generations Speak to Each Other About Race

I predicted that Barack Obama would become the next president of the United States during a conversation over wedding centerpieces at my parents' dinner table in the Bronx, on a summer's day in 2007. My father smiled, then declared I was insane.

He held the concern of a more wizened America: that Obama was wide-eyed and naive, silly to think he could corral enough ballots in a country still teeming with racists.

I slapped my fork on the table and declared that the only thing possibly standing in the way of people electing a qualified black man as president were people who thought a qualified black man couldn't -- or shouldn't -- be president. And there no longer were enough of them.

I spoke of electoral calculations and policy and progress; he pressed on about the legacy of America's original sin. Facts started spewing out fast -- and probably inaccurately -- and only uncomfortable silences intervened.

"After all these years," my father said, breaking the silence, "you still don't understand."

"No, Dad, I think you don't understand."

That summer, my father and I began a debate that took place at dinner tables across the country. They were conversations attempting to bridge the generational chasm between those who lived during the March on Washington and those who read about it in a textbook. As the campaign to succeed President Bush rolled on, new doors were opened for fathers and sons to talk about the psychology of racism and the availability of opportunity in modern America.

My father is 57 now. He immigrated to New York in 1972, inheriting the struggles of a black American. He taught me how to tell a joke, shoot a skyhook and beware of racists. They came in the form of the college professor who suddenly altered his grades when he realized that the "Everton Samuels" in his class was a Jamaican, or the pestering security guard who harassed him as he walked into a corporate headquarters. And worse, there was the boss who would rather see him quit than give him a salary on par with his white counterparts.

His experiences compelled him to give forewarnings about what he figured would happen in my future: that one day, a good friend from high school might get mad and call me the N word. Or that my white roommate from Northwestern and I would never sustain a bond as close as my sister and her black roommate from Howard. None of these fears have come true.

A father's duty is to prepare his children for the worst. Sometimes, his eyes glaze over when he tells the story of the job he left -- or he'll swallow hard before verbalizing how the color line will strike down my closest friendships.

DIFFERENT WORLDS

I am 24 now. My voice trembles the same way his does when I worry, and I often gulp before I say something I'm not sure I should. Sometimes when I brush my teeth, I'm startled to see the same lanky frame and large head and bushy eyebrows that he had in his 20s, when he first began to realize that race could be an insurmountable hurdle to his American Dream.

The America I see seems so much more penetrable. Yes, there was the brown-haired, blue-eyed high school debate opponent from Massachusetts who refused to shake my hand when we sparred, but then there were his teammates who would settle for nothing less than a hug. There were those who mocked my hair, but then there were those who thanked me for explaining why a black man could be so upset when his coif was compared with a cleaning abrasive.

No one I've known -- old or young -- wanted to be a racist, even if they were practicing racism. Whether that muted or muddied discrimination is debatable, but what was made clear was that prejudice was no longer in fashion. It was manageable -- and could be conquered.

He smiled whenever I made these statements, waiting for the day he could prove me wrong.

The night of Jan. 3, 2008, my laptop screen bubbled with instant messages. Barack Obama, the so-called longshot, had just won the Iowa caucus.

"I was a little teary-eyed," wrote a 22-year-old friend, who was white and still in school in Chicago, upon hearing the results. "People our age actually got out and stopped something terrible from happening."

And then came my 25-year-old Nigerian-American friend who was still searching for a job in New York: "A black man won a state that is 96 percent white . . . I'm inspired. I just might run for Senate."

The only person who I really wanted to hear from was my father. He called early the next morning. He, too, could not believe what he had just seen.

"Racists are complicated," he told me, killing the mood.

His theory: Individual residents of Iowa just gave the election to Obama because they thought he wouldn't win -- and used their ballots as an opportunity to feel better about themselves. Now that Obama had actually taken an early skirmish, no one would risk letting him win the big prize.

So, I hardly needed to wait for a phone call after Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire.

"I told you so!" he said.

CHANGING MINDS

There's a certain persuasive power that parents always have over their children -- and that night his gloat finally sunk in. I began to think that, perhaps, the case for Obama was not so easy. Was it Clinton's tears? Was it the healthcare plan? Or was it race?

Reporters across the country were probing the question. They were traveling to rural Pennsylvania, where they thought a black person couldn't stand a chance, talking to residents in Montana who had never actually seen a black person in their lives. The numbers began to paint a clearer story, yet the country seemed locked in a perpetual state of, "Really?" Because it appeared that the country couldn't get over Obama's race, I wondered if I had looked past the issue way too soon.

My father's feelings were also changing. He despised what he thought were coated allusions from Obama's opponents. The constant comparisons with the Rev. Jesse Jackson struck him as disrespectful; the accusation that he spoke empty words sounded like they were making him out to be a stereotypical black hustler, not a serious candidate.

By the time he was to cast his vote in the New York primary, my father chose Obama. To do otherwise, he said, would have felt like racial betrayal.

Almost a year after our initial dinner conversation about Obama, he sealed the nomination. The few Republican friends who were my age expected an easy campaign. My few nonjournalist friends had canvassed their respective cities, registering voters and chanting, "Yes We Can." My father still has never uttered the phrase.

On the morning of Nov. 4, I took one last look at the electoral map before heading to work. The result seemed all but academic. I called my father early in the morning.

"You weren't alive when this guy Bradley was running for governor of California, were you?" he said.

He was referring to Tom Bradley, a popular black mayor of Los Angeles who led in early polls but ultimately lost the election to a white candidate, a defeat that would forever be blamed on the "Bradley effect" -- whites saying they supported the black candidate, but failing to do so when they entered the voting booth.

"Was I alive?" I replied. "Of course not." Then I headed off to a day's worth of assignments.

WITNESSING CHANGE

Later, I ended up at the election-night party for the Broward Sheriff's race. I was waiting for an interview with Al Lamberti, the Republican candidate, when I saw the announcement on a large TV: Barack Obama had been elected president.

My knees buckled. Then, I ran outside the building to deliver the sweetest "I told you so" I've ever given. My jubilation was met with a soft and utterly confused voice.

"Maybe you're right," I recall him saying. "I can't understand it. This is not the America I know."

He paused.

"I still have to figure it out . . . Maybe I've lived in this country for too long."

With the inauguration of the first black president just days away, my father doesn't regret his initial skepticism. It still seemed foolish to him to envision such a sight, when his earliest memories in this country illustrated that his race was met with such hate.

Then, there's what is probably my earliest memory at the New York's annual West Indian Day Parade in 1987. I was barely three years old. Dad told me then that the day was special because we were seeing a man named Jesse Jackson. The first celebrity I ever saw up close was a black man running for president. Sitting atop my father's shoulders, I watched Jackson tell the audience that the worst thing for a person to lose was hope.