I'm sorry, no.
Thomas Friedman:
And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man - Barack Hussein Obama - won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A typical narrative of this campaign was whether Obama could overcome the Bradley effect, assassination attempts, and racially-motivated personal attacks to win the presidency. In other words, the fact that he overcame odds is not proof that those odds a) never existed in the first place or b) were so flimsy and epiphenomenal that Obama's victory vanquished totally.
All Obama's victory means a priori is that he is really good at overcoming extant barriers to entry. Moreover, the history of race relations in America suggests that those barriers are still very much present. That Obama's victory came to pass despite these barriers. That Obama's victory is the exception that proves the general rule.
Of course it's not insignificant. But I like how Nick Kristof ended his [more insightful, far superior] column this week:Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: “Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”
That sounds about right.
And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man - Barack Hussein Obama - won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A typical narrative of this campaign was whether Obama could overcome the Bradley effect, assassination attempts, and racially-motivated personal attacks to win the presidency. In other words, the fact that he overcame odds is not proof that those odds a) never existed in the first place or b) were so flimsy and epiphenomenal that Obama's victory vanquished totally.
All Obama's victory means a priori is that he is really good at overcoming extant barriers to entry. Moreover, the history of race relations in America suggests that those barriers are still very much present. That Obama's victory came to pass despite these barriers. That Obama's victory is the exception that proves the general rule.
Of course it's not insignificant. But I like how Nick Kristof ended his [more insightful, far superior] column this week:Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: “Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”
That sounds about right.