Post-election thoughts

Scattered thoughts, that is.

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On Tuesday night I was teaching. Yup, my BIO101 class for adults. Scheduled for 6-10pm. But it was the mid-term exam day. I made an exam that can be done in two hours. I knew that my students were itchy to get it done and go home to watch the election returns. Many of them are African American as well. I sat there, with the computer on, browser open on TalkingPointsMemo, FiveThirtyEight, CNN.com, FriendFeed...watching as they announced Kantucky and Vermont, refreshing every couple of seconds. At 8pm I kicked the last couple of stragglers out, got in the car and went home (they announced a few more states on NPR during my drive).

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Before the class started, though, I was in the faculty room making copies when another professor came in. He was determined to keep his class until 10pm exactly. He was saying some silly things about Obama not to be trusted because he was raised by his grandmother as if that was bad or relevant, and continued with several other stupid and hidden-racist comments. I let it be - no need talking back to this guy. Too old and set in his ways to be fixable.

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At home, we watched mostly CNN (occasionally switching to MSNBC). And every now and then I would go back online to see what is going on (as cable news are certainly not going to be as fast, nor could the talking-heads be trusted to report relevant stuff or frame it correctly). After it became obvious that Obama was going to win, my wife and son fell asleep. My daughter and I moved to her room and watched the rest of the coverage there. At 11pm, when it was officially announced, we went out on the porch and listened to the fireworks from the direction of the UNC campus.

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We watched the speeches by McCain and Obama. I am not a kind of person who gets emotional about this kind of stuff, but I choked up a little during Obama's speech. But I was surprised at my other emotion - anger. Eight years of frustration just erupted at that moment. The fact that those years were possible made me angry. The fact that millions of people, after it became obvious that no legitimate reason beyond racism still remained to support Republicans, still voted for McCain, made me angry.

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My daughter did not understand why everyone in Chicago was crying and why everyone was saying this was a 'historical election'. For her and for her generation, it is hard to understand why it would be unusual to have a Black President - that's a normal kind of thing in their world. When my kids invite friends over, it looks like a Unesco event.

I told her: "You were only four when Bush became President. You do not remember the time before it. You grew up during the Bush years so you have no idea how it feels to live in a normal country with a normal government and a normal President. Now you will see how that looks like."

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I myself had a similar difficulty. I understand the American history of race relations only from reading about it. Growing up, every week on TV News there would be some Head of State from a non-aligned country visiting Tito and most of them were Black or Arabic or Muslim, so I grew up with that image of a variety of people leading countries. Being white was not the norm in that world.

But on NPR they had a long daily series of interviews with ordinary people. And almost every African American interviewed said something along the lines of "now I can tell my kids they can grow up to be whatever they want and not lie to them as I say that". I understood that.

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Back in April when I spent a month in Europe, everyone was very interested in the US election and my take on it. There, especially in Serbia, they were adamant that America will never elect a Black President and that the Dems only have a chance if Hillary Clinton is the nominee. While myself undecided at the time (I did vote for Obama in the NC caucuses in May, though, mainly because of the people the two candidates surrounded themselves with - I did not want to see any of the old Clintonites anywhere near the White House and liked some of the Obama advisors much more), I replied: "Just you watch - we will have a Black President in November."

When asked to explain, I said that while racism in the USA is alive and well, due to the history of Civil Rights struggle, racism is very non-PC. Thus, advertising against Obama and reporting by the media on him would have to veil the racism behind some very tricky dog-whistles and still be in danger of backfiring. Most could not be done in the open, but behind the scenes. The kids and younger folks, after decades of learning about the US history in schools and hearing how racism is bad, are much less racist than their elders.

On the other hand, sexism never had that kind of historical event that can be used as a teaching moment. Thus, sexism is rampant and openly so. Ads against Hillary could be openly sexist and still not backfire. TV pundits could say outrageously misogynist stuff and not get fired. In many ways, USA has gone much farther along in race relations than gender. And remember that even historically, Black males got a right to vote before women (of any color) did. It just seems that (opposite from the situation in Europe) race always advances first, and gender follows (then sexual orientation next, and atheists still did not crack the first egg open). The femiphobic males that comprise such a large proportion of the electorate will more easily vote for a Black man than for a woman of any color at the top of the ticket (Palin was safely under "control" of McCain who was perceived as a top dog for bagging such a chick - or so the wingnut mind works anyway).

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Somebody did a poll of the world and most countries, if permitted, would have voted for Obama, with a few notable exceptions. One of the countries that would have gone blue is Serbia. But not gung-ho for him. After all, people around the world are not directly affected by jobs and healthcare in the USA. They are affected by the foreign policy. From the Serbian perspective, there is no real difference between the foreign policies of the two parties, both seen as equally aggressive and imperialistic. It was Clinton, after all, who screwed with the Balkans for eight years and ended up bombing Belgrade so there is no love for the Democrats there. If anything, Republicans are more predictable - they have a hard-on for Middle East while Democrats seem to bomb random countries around the world.

But with Bush years, perceptions changed. Vicious aggression against some darkies somewhere, bombing them without even knowing who they are, is not foreign policy - it's batshit craziness. The main difference people there saw between the two candidates is that Obama is pragmatic, rational and thoughtful, while Bush (and later they also saw that McCain is cut from the same cloth and even crazier) is just nuts. And the way Republican economics is based on outdated vodoo ideas, has repercussions around the world. The way Republicans ignore the environment - something that is very important to Europeans including Serbs - has global consequences. So, reluctantly, Serbs in general were hoping that McCain loses, more than they got excited about Obama winning. They say: good, you got lesser of two evils.

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