The Color-blind Generation

PerryScope
Perry Diaz

On August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. evoked the name of Lincoln in his “I Have a Dream” speech. “I have a dream,” he said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Almost half a century later on November 3, 2008, his dream came true with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Obama was catapulted to the presidency with the vote of a new generation of Americans: idealistic, young people of diverse colors — white, black, brown, yellow, red — who judged Obama not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. This is the color-blind generation that Dr. King dreamed about and they’re the vanguard of a movement that changed politics in America.

The road America took towards a color-blind society — we’re not there yet but getting closer to it — was pock-marked with violence and hatred. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln led his Republican Party to stop the expansion of slavery beyond the borders of the 11 pro-slavery southern states. Lincoln’s ascension to the presidency sparked the American Civil War in 1861 that took 620,000 lives — the bloodiest in the nation’s history. In 1862, in the midst of the civil war, Lincoln made a bold step and issued his Emancipation Proclamation with the goal of ending slavery. The victory of Lincoln’s Union Army in 1865 ended the civil war.

Although freed from slavery, the African-Americans had to fight for equality for the next 100 years. Racial segregation was the rule rather than the exception. African-Americans were systematically disenfranchised particularly in the Deep South where Jim Crow laws relegated African-Americans to second class citizens.

With the landmark legislation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which ended segregation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed discriminatory voting practices against African-Americans, African-Americans and other minorities made inroads in politics. However, gerrymandering still lived — electoral districts were arbitrarily redistributed to the advantage of the majority whites.

Forty-three years after the Voting Rights Act was enacted, a black man finally shattered the racial barriers in politics. The key to Obama’s success was his ability to register and mobilize millions of young voters… and get them out to vote on election day.

Polls showed that Obama got at least two-thirds of the young — and first-time — voters. But what became apparent during the campaign was that these young voters were ethnically diverse. They looked upon Obama as a leader whose blackness was irrelevant to their cause. To them he is the visionary that they believe would lead America in a new direction and change the way the government works.

Obama saw the strength of the Internet-savvy youths. He used state-of-the-art technology to gather and compile the email addresses of 70 million Americans that he could reach at the click of a laptop keyboard. Aaron Smith of the Pew Internet and American Life Project said, “They have millions of e-mail addresses, phone numbers and whole communities of supporters – both geographic and online – and it will be very interesting to see how they use them in government.”

Obama’s Internet-based networking website www.my.barackobama.com attracted millions of young voters. He used “viral networking” to spread his message by email and text messaging. And he raised a record-setting $158 million in September alone, 75% of which came online.

Obama has changed the way of reaching out to voters. Indeed, it was his consistent message of “Change” that attracted this color-blind generation of young idealistic Americans who are restless for change. Finally, America is beginning to outgrow its race-conscious ways of doing business.

A year ago, many people were saying that America was not ready to elect an African-American President. Even African-Americans were cynical of Obama’s quixotic quest for the presidency. Before the Iowa caucuses, many African-Americans opted to support Hillary Clinton whom many believed was in a better position to clinch the Democratic nomination. Many believed that Obama did not have a chance to win the Iowa Democratic caucuses. The conventional wisdom at that time was that Iowa was too lily white — and very Republican — for Obama to snatch. But snatch he did… with the support of young white voters who flocked to the caucuses that gave Obama his first primary victory. By the time South Carolina held its primary, the African-Americans had detoured from the Clinton trail and gave Obama his first southern state victory.

With his African-American base and the newly empowered color-blind generation of young voters, Obama clinched the presidency on November 4th. Now, the question is: will the color-blind generation continue to expand and flex its political muscle in electing our national leaders without regard to race? And finally, would other people of color be able to follow Obama’s footsteps to the White House?

(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)