.
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada / Globe and Mail /January 20, 2009
John Ibbitson's America
WASHINGTON — Thomas Gideon was only 12 when he foolishly walked into a restaurant in Seneca, S.C., and sat at the counter.
"They told me to get out and go round to this little window at the back," he remembered yesterday. "That's where they served black people."
Mr. Gideon, who is 67, remembers "segregated schools, segregated restaurants, picking cotton all day - I did it all."
Which is why he had to travel to Washington, where he went to the National Mall yesterday along with many thousands of others, even though there were no events planned.
Billy Johnson snaps a photo of General Mealer and his grandsons Darryl, second from left, and Jason posing with a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama.
(Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
"You've heard people say it a thousand times, that we never thought we'd live to see this day," said Hazel Prentice Holt, 72, laughing with joy. "But it's true!"
And yet Americans celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday yesterday. And on that day, one out of every nine black Americans between the ages of 20 and 35 was in jail. That will still be true tomorrow.
Only half of all African Americans graduate from high school. Three-quarters of all whites graduate. Half of all African American girls will become pregnant before they turn 20. The figure among white teenage girls is 19 per cent. Two-thirds of African American births are to single mothers.
Mr. Obama's presidency may be hugely symbolic for the African American community, but the aching gulf in opportunity, in incomes, in outcomes between African Americans and the broader population is still there, and no one knows it better than African Americans themselves.
And yet those on the Mall yesterday would not be dismayed.
"With Obama, a young black person can dream of being a teacher, rather than a teacher's assistant; they can dream of being a nurse, rather than a nurse's aide." That's what LeRoi Whethers believes. He teaches young inmates, many of them black, at New York's Rikers Island prison.
Barack Obama means everything to these kids, he says.
"They think they can only go so far. But with Obama, they see they can go farther."
________________________________________
Charmain and George Emerson of Toronto, Canada
are taking their sons Campbell, 12, Noah, 10, and Miles, 8,
to Washington for the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Educating the Emerson boys
The Globe and Mail follows a bi-racial couple as they take their sons to witness history in Washington
By Kate Hammer
Click to read Globe and Mail Update
January 20, 2009 at 4:21 PM EST
_______________________________________
Nowhere are African Americans more beaten down, or lifted up, than in Washington. Mr. Obama, who started out as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side, has promised to become involved in the life of the city. If he does, he'll hear an interesting story.
Washington is, first and foremost, a Southern town, and there are still plenty of people living who can remember separate-and-unequal restrooms and restaurants that didn't serve blacks.
The official end of segregation did nothing to integrate the racial solitudes. Instead, as members of an emerging black middle class - attracted to government jobs that had suddenly become available to them - began moving into predominantly white neighbourhoods, the whites fled to the suburbs in Maryland and Virginia. As working- and under-class blacks took their place, middle-class African Americans fled as well.
And then, on four dark days in April of 1968, enraged rioters burned the city in the wake of King's assassination. Shaw, Columbia Heights and H Street Northeast were devastated. Washington, the first city in the United States to have a majority-black population, became two cities: the embattled white enclaves in the northwest quadrant, and the poor, black, crime-ridden neighbourhoods that dominated the rest of the city.
_____________________________________
OBAMA BECOMES PRESIDENT
President Barack Obama,
the 44th President of the United States,
delivers his inaugural address in
Washington.
(Reuters)
Click to read
Kate Hammer's
report
from Washington
______________________________________
But the story doesn't end there. In the 1990s, the children of the baby boomers began returning to the District, sick of cars, commutes and strip malls.
They began a process of reverse integration: middle-class white residents infiltrating black, working-class neighbourhoods.
There have been tensions, as blacks have been evicted from their rented homes and forced to make their own exodus to the suburbs, but in the main things have gone well, with blacks and whites living warily side by side, as Shaw and Columbia Heights recover, and even H Street starts to spruce up.
And believe it or not, those statistics on black poverty, bad as they are, are actually better than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. The black middle and upper-middle classes continue to grow, though far too slowly.
Mr. Obama is cognizant of the importance of his presidency for the black community.
"There is an entire generation that will grow up taking for granted that the highest office in the land is filled by an African American," the president-elect told The Washington Post last week. "I mean, that's a radical thing. It changes how black children look at themselves. It also changes how white children look at black children. And I wouldn't underestimate the force of that."
More than anything else, Mr. Obama's presidency displaces resigned anger with new hope, however ephemeral that hope might be.
Ms. Holt, who has known and admired Mr. Obama since his earliest days in Chicago, knows all too well the road that African Americans have walked.
She was about 10, growing up in Vicksburg, Miss., when one day she found herself rooted in fear as a tornado roared toward her.
The only refuge was a school across the street, but it was for whites only and Ms. Holt didn't know which terrified her more: the tornado or the thought of going into that school. She braved the school, which turned out to be nearly empty.
Why shouldn't she be bitter and angry for life? Yet she's anything but.
"Things are better than they were before, and not as good as they're going to get," she insists.
Amen.
© Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.
Billy Johnson snaps a photo of General Mealer and his grandsons Darryl, second from left, and Jason posing with a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama.
(Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
"You've heard people say it a thousand times, that we never thought we'd live to see this day," said Hazel Prentice Holt, 72, laughing with joy. "But it's true!"
And yet Americans celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday yesterday. And on that day, one out of every nine black Americans between the ages of 20 and 35 was in jail. That will still be true tomorrow.
Only half of all African Americans graduate from high school. Three-quarters of all whites graduate. Half of all African American girls will become pregnant before they turn 20. The figure among white teenage girls is 19 per cent. Two-thirds of African American births are to single mothers.
Mr. Obama's presidency may be hugely symbolic for the African American community, but the aching gulf in opportunity, in incomes, in outcomes between African Americans and the broader population is still there, and no one knows it better than African Americans themselves.
And yet those on the Mall yesterday would not be dismayed.
"With Obama, a young black person can dream of being a teacher, rather than a teacher's assistant; they can dream of being a nurse, rather than a nurse's aide." That's what LeRoi Whethers believes. He teaches young inmates, many of them black, at New York's Rikers Island prison.
Barack Obama means everything to these kids, he says.
"They think they can only go so far. But with Obama, they see they can go farther."
________________________________________
Charmain and George Emerson of Toronto, Canada
are taking their sons Campbell, 12, Noah, 10, and Miles, 8,
to Washington for the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Educating the Emerson boys
The Globe and Mail follows a bi-racial couple as they take their sons to witness history in Washington
By Kate Hammer
Click to read Globe and Mail Update
January 20, 2009 at 4:21 PM EST
_______________________________________
Nowhere are African Americans more beaten down, or lifted up, than in Washington. Mr. Obama, who started out as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side, has promised to become involved in the life of the city. If he does, he'll hear an interesting story.
Washington is, first and foremost, a Southern town, and there are still plenty of people living who can remember separate-and-unequal restrooms and restaurants that didn't serve blacks.
The official end of segregation did nothing to integrate the racial solitudes. Instead, as members of an emerging black middle class - attracted to government jobs that had suddenly become available to them - began moving into predominantly white neighbourhoods, the whites fled to the suburbs in Maryland and Virginia. As working- and under-class blacks took their place, middle-class African Americans fled as well.
And then, on four dark days in April of 1968, enraged rioters burned the city in the wake of King's assassination. Shaw, Columbia Heights and H Street Northeast were devastated. Washington, the first city in the United States to have a majority-black population, became two cities: the embattled white enclaves in the northwest quadrant, and the poor, black, crime-ridden neighbourhoods that dominated the rest of the city.
_____________________________________
OBAMA BECOMES PRESIDENT
President Barack Obama,
the 44th President of the United States,
delivers his inaugural address in
Washington.
(Reuters)
Click to read
Kate Hammer's
report
from Washington
______________________________________
But the story doesn't end there. In the 1990s, the children of the baby boomers began returning to the District, sick of cars, commutes and strip malls.
They began a process of reverse integration: middle-class white residents infiltrating black, working-class neighbourhoods.
There have been tensions, as blacks have been evicted from their rented homes and forced to make their own exodus to the suburbs, but in the main things have gone well, with blacks and whites living warily side by side, as Shaw and Columbia Heights recover, and even H Street starts to spruce up.
And believe it or not, those statistics on black poverty, bad as they are, are actually better than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. The black middle and upper-middle classes continue to grow, though far too slowly.
Mr. Obama is cognizant of the importance of his presidency for the black community.
"There is an entire generation that will grow up taking for granted that the highest office in the land is filled by an African American," the president-elect told The Washington Post last week. "I mean, that's a radical thing. It changes how black children look at themselves. It also changes how white children look at black children. And I wouldn't underestimate the force of that."
More than anything else, Mr. Obama's presidency displaces resigned anger with new hope, however ephemeral that hope might be.
Ms. Holt, who has known and admired Mr. Obama since his earliest days in Chicago, knows all too well the road that African Americans have walked.
She was about 10, growing up in Vicksburg, Miss., when one day she found herself rooted in fear as a tornado roared toward her.
The only refuge was a school across the street, but it was for whites only and Ms. Holt didn't know which terrified her more: the tornado or the thought of going into that school. She braved the school, which turned out to be nearly empty.
Why shouldn't she be bitter and angry for life? Yet she's anything but.
"Things are better than they were before, and not as good as they're going to get," she insists.
Amen.
© Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.
