Hillary in the (White) House

We elected a black man. Are we ready to elect a woman?

BY ANNA MARCH

I DREAM of Iowa.

Hillary Clinton has just made her first public appearances since resigning as Secretary of State, and I am enthusiastic about her presumed candidacy; it’s making me dream of Iowa. I long to go there to work on electing the first woman president.

I watched Barack Obama there last November at the final stop of his final campaign, just before midnight on the chilly evening before election day in Des Moines, the crowd of 20,000 strong doing call and response along with our president. “Fired up!” “Ready to go!”

This is not post-racial America, despite what some would try and have us believe. This is still racist that-nigger-messed-up-the-country America and I am crying from true joy to think that 20,000 mostly white folks are out there in Iowa — in Iowa! — for our president. For Barack Obama. For a black man. A black man! (I don’t believe that Iowans are any more likely to be racist than the rest of us, but the heartland of America is not the first place that jumps to mind when I think of racial progress.)

I am happy and proud that we re-elected Obama, a great president, and I am happy and proud that we re-elected a black man. Knowing something in the abstract — that a black man can be president — isn’t the same thing as knowing it in reality, watching it manifest. No one needs it spelled out to them what a tremendous thing this is. That now, when black kids look in the mirror, they can see themselves as president. That now, when any of us think “president,” we don’t just think of all those white men, we think about Barack Obama alongside Washington, Jefferson, the Roosevelts, Kennedy, and all the other whites, great and mediocre. We understand that it is a good thing to add president to the list of associations we have with black men — along with the stereotyped associations like athlete, entertainer, and criminal. We inherently understand that it is a good thing for our country, for we the people, to dismantle and reconstruct our notions of power and leadership by electing a black man to be our president and the leader of the free world.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/11/hillary_in_the_white_house_partner/