Race, Gender, the Sixties, and the Democrats

In the sixties when my daughter was a teenager I remember a dinner conversation where she adamently stated her belief that a woman would be president. I told her not to be disappointed if it wasn't in her lifetime. She told me that she hoped I wouldn't be disappointed that it would be in my lifetime.

I also recall bringing my son to New York to hear Thelonius Monk at the Bluenote. After the show we went back stage and I remember my son telling Monk that someday a black man will be president. Monk just shook his head with a little knowing laugh as though my son was as innocent as a new born.

These were not isolated moments. This generation growing up then believed it in the same way they took it for granted that a man would walk on the moon. These were things my generation thought were quite a stretch. Little did these young people know that late sixties optimism was at the edge of a deep abyss it would take forty years to cross, not unlike a certain biblical crossing. The Democrats took on that dual challenge of race and gender. Those Republicans won many an election pointing out how Democrats were more worried about women and blacks then they were worried about you.

I had to laugh when that Geraldine Ferraro pointed out that this Obama guy would not be where he was if he wasn't black. Do you understand how laughable the notion that being black was a leg up to the presidency would have seemed forty years ago, let alone eighty-six years ago in 1922 when Bert Williams, the first black man to break into white broadway, passed from the scene. Those words would have never crossed Monks lips I'll tell you. My friend, that a comment like that would not get you laughed out of the room is a victory of sorts all by itself. And that victory belongs to that sixties generation not mine. It belongs to the Democrats, not the Republicans who still don't know what to do with a woman outside the kitchen and a black that is not picking cotton or at least shinning their shoes. They bemoan the passing and wish for the return of that woman and that black.

Edwards was my man. He spoke the language that I understand. We will get a woman through the glass ceiling and into the White House long before we will lift a woman up onto the dock. A black man will make it into the White House long before his brothers in the inner city will have a job with a living wage. So all victories are only worthy of a momentary recognition before returning to the hard work required to sustain and progress a step further.

But forty years ago Democrats took on a narrative that they still fear to enunciate clearly. That's too bad. It's a wonderful story to tell. These were two important things for our time that have taken a step forward. If a black and a woman end up splitting the Democratic vote by way of the inevitable dissappointment one will have to endure, let us not forget that such a split is itself a sign of the progress for that narrative taken on so many years ago. No matter how it turns out a victory has already been won.

And one more thing, Hillary can no more get out of this race before it runs its course than Barack could if he were in her position. If that is poorly understood it is because Democrats do not understand the power of the narrative that makes it so. Of course they will say it is Hillary's personality, and that may be so, but personality or not, for the sake of the viability of the narrative that has made this year what it is, that it must run its course must be so.

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