Have We “Overcome”?
November 20, 2008
On the morning following President-elect Obama’s Election Day victory, the press and airwaves were filled with truly exultant and jubilant reflections from the many supporters of the incoming President, who see in Obama’s rise to power renewed hope and opportunity for the future of our nation. I was particularly interested that day, however, in how Republicans and Independent supporters of the losing candidate, John McCain, were reacting to the defeat of their nominee. Conservative Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby, wrote of the meaning of this year’s election from the perspective of one who had supported the losing candidate, and he concluded his editorial with the following reflection:
“… [T]he most lustrous silver lining of all is the racial one. As a politician and policymaker, Obama distresses me; his extreme liberalism is not what the nation needs. But as a symbol - a son of Africa elected to lead a majority-white nation that once enslaved Africans and treated their descendants with great cruelty - Obama’s rise makes me proud of my country. The anthem of the Civil Rights Movement was “We Shall Overcome.” Impossible as it might have seemed scant decades ago, we have.” (November 5, 2008)
History itself will ultimately judge the long-term implications of the election of our nation’s first African-American president, but I think we, as a nation, recognize the magnitude of that simple fact. Listening to Obama’s victory speech, I thought back to the sermon I delivered on Yom Kippur morning, which referenced the battle for civil rights in the 1950’s, and I believe that all of those who had the courage to raise their voices on behalf of desegregation and equality would see in this moment the vindication and fulfillment of their dreams.
That is not to say that racism is dead and gone from our nation – far, far from it! Sadly, the problem of racism is complex, deep-seated, widespread, and not limited to the white majority. Recall, for instance, the diatribes of hatred against whites preached by Obama’s “former minister”, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And Obama’s election has clearly revitalized the engines of White Supremacists and neo-Nazi sympathizers.
The battle against racism, prejudice and discrimination has always been high on our Jewish agenda. When contemplating the meaning of why the Torah imagined the creation of humanity as having originated in a single person, Adam, the rabbis taught: “This was so that no person can say ‘My ancestry is superior to your ancestry.’” From the perspective of Torah, the idea of racial superiority is simply unthinkable, and as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
During the campaign, President-elect Obama delivered an historic speech in which he discussed the problem of race in the United States, and in which he sought to distance himself from the Reverend’s tirades. Obama said:
“The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.” (March 18, 2008)
As Jews we have a particular stake in celebrating that aspect of last month’s election in the context of the ongoing battle against racism in this land. Despite Jacoby’s hopeful message, we have not yet “overcome”, but as a nation, we seem to have taken an historic step in the march toward that vision.
