A Vision of Change, Blurred

I need to apologize to all of my ardent Obama supporter friends for what I'm about to write. In particular, to my friend Deb, who just sent me an email containing pictures from an Obama rally in Oregon. The subject line reads, “This is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!,” and as I scrolled down to view the images, I had to agree. The pictures featured thousands of supporters--probably about 95 percent of whom were white--gathered to hear Obama speak. Many were listening so intently, it almost hinted at rapture.

Those pictures literally stirred my heart--especially as a woman who grew up under American Apartheid in Cairo, Illinois back in the 1960’s. But it’s because I grew up in Cairo, Illinois that I am actually starting to prepare myself for profoundly bitter disappointment on November 5th. You see, I bear the scars of what hatred, fear, distrust, hypocrisy and greed can do to the dreams, hopes and aspirations of a small American town--and I have always believed Cairo was a microcosm of what the future could hold for the rest of America.

This morning, 8,000 miles away from Cairo in Nairobi, I read a newspaper story that has replaced any stirrings of hope in my heart with icy dread. It described a decision by one of Hillary Clinton’s former supporters, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, to support John McCain, because Barack Obama is too “elitist.”

Where does one BEGIN to tackle that kind of twisted logic? First, the woman married into one of the richest families who ever walked the face of the Earth, and she’s calling Obama elitist?? Second, as an ardent Clinton backer, how can Forester de Rothschild possibly defend supporting a man whose policies are diametrically opposed to everything Hillary Clinton stands for…..AND who has made a mockery of everything American suffrage and feminism stand for by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate?

But solely because she is female--and because her selection panders to the fear of everything that is NOT 100% white, Christian, and conservative--Palin will draw support from people like Lynn Forester de Rothschild, so-called loyal Democrats who have decided to “take a stand” of some sort, one so vastly removed from previously articulated ideals that it’s almost like deciding to play Russian Roulette with your vote.

And it’s not just peeved ex-Clinton supporters I’m worried about these days. Reading that article left me badly shaken. It reminds me of how I feel every time I go back to Cairo, Illinois, and witness the economic decay and feel the oppressive hopelessness and futility. As I wrote earlier this year, Cairo, Illinois had the potential to be a thriving tourist destination, with its seemingly prime location between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Its vibrant history, with links to the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Civil War, Huck Finn and the Riverboat era, could have made Cairo rival Branson, MO as a vacation mecca for Americana-obsessed travelers.

Instead, most people who know anything about Cairo remember it as a racist hotspot during the 1960’s. Any positive hopes for Cairo’s future were destroyed by the early 1970’s, when the “powers that be” decided they would rather strangle the town than share power and economic benefits with black residents. I am one of the thousands of people who left Cairo soon after high school because if you possesed dreams and goals for your future, there was no other choice.

The handful of “powerbrokers” who may somehow still be profiting on Cairo’s shriveled corpse don’t even live there anymore themselves. My hometown is a tragic, empty shell, because when faced with the choice to denounce hatred, fear, distrust, hypocrisy and greed, Cairo’s “elite” made an illogical decision that was clearly not in the best interest of the entire community.

It almost doesn’t matter that the people who made this decision were white, and the majority of people who suffer its long-term consequences are black. The parallel between what happened to Cairo, Illinois and the decision America has to make on November 4th is not so much about race as it is about destiny. Just as the Civil Rights Movement offered America the opportunity to reclaim its humanity, this election is about a profound shift from selfishness to selflessness. I don’t say that to paint Obama as some benevolent, Ghandi-like figure, but as I listen to reports from the US about the housing crisis and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and AIG and $150 a barrel oil, I believe you don’t have to be an economist or a humanitarian to realize that America has to stop focusing on individual gain and start figuring out what it will take for more people to have a basic measure of stability.

Sure, that may get me branded as a socialist radical in some quarters, but I don’t care. I’m tired. I’d been holding my breath ever since I switched gears from supporting Clinton to supporting Obama, but just within the past month or so, I had started to exhale and feel really hopeful. I started to embrace the message of change, and began to be greatly energized and buoyed by the prospect of an Obama presidency.

For the most part, I still retain that hope. But after reading about Mrs. Forester de Rothschild’s decision, I’m now more focused on protecting my heart from the same kind of piercing pain I feel about my hometown…magnified a thousand times over. It reminded me of going back to Cairo and always wishing with all my heart that something could change there, and that most people could have jobs and economic stability and decent houses and schools, but leaving every time feeling frustrated and sad because it’ll probably never happen, because a handful of people are more invested in their own political ambitions than in the fate of the community as a whole.

And it reminded me of two other recent occurrences. The first was a BBC radio interview I heard with a white man in California who described himself as a Democrat, and said he thought Obama was inspirational. But the man said he would be voting for John McCain because Obama was African American, and he worried might NOT keep the interests of white America in mind as President.

The second was a letter to the editor I read in Nairobi’s Daily Nation newspaper. A Kenyan man who described himself as a student of American history declared his belief that Obama would lose in November because in spite of all that's positive in the nation, Americans seem quite capable of voting against their best interests.

Too often, little things like hatred, fear, distrust, hypocrisy and greed always seem to get in the way of common sense.