Election sparks talk of race
Student leaders consider implications of Obama's historical accomplishment
By: Paul Bowers
The Daily Gamecock
Posted: 11/13/08
Tommy Preston, a former black president of USC's student body, watched his country elect its first black president last Tuesday night.
"I remember on the night of the election calling my grandparents, and they were crying on the other end of the phone because it was just such a special moment for them," Preston said.
However, Preston, a first-year law student who served in the executive office for the 2006-2007 term, is hesitant to declare the upcoming Barack Obama presidency a mere matter of race.
"He shouldn't be considered the first black president. He should be considered a president who happens to be black," he said.
Still, he is not alone among black student leaders in attaching certain significance to this election as a revealing moment in racial history.
"I would love to say that we don't have race issues here in America, but I'd be lying," said Randy Gaines, a third-year sports and entertainment management student and president of USC's Association of African-American Students.
"The aftermath of the election - especially the night of and the day after - has shown us that even those who aren't racist because they have black friends and like black music have another side to them," Gaines said.
Gaines saw racial slurs and prejudices come to the forefront in the months leading up Nov. 4 and said "people are beginning to show their true colors."
Preston also recalls dealing with racial tension during his term as university president, especially when the Confederate flag was displayed at Williams-Brice Stadium and shown on national television.
"I actually had to be a leader in a sense in helping to deal with some of the racial problems that we have here on our own campus," Preston said. On a much larger scale, President-elect Obama faces this same daunting task.
In South Carolina, where Obama ended up roughly nine percentage points behind Republican candidate John McCain, there has been no shortage of post-election grumbling, especially over the matter of voters who picked Obama solely based on his race.
"Some of these black people are idiots," Gaines said. "At the end of the day, racism is not correct on any side."
Brandon Gates, a black student who serves as president of Gamecocks Advocating the Mature Management of Alcohol, agrees that voting based on race is misguided. However, now that Obama is heading to the Oval Office, he sees value in having a black president.
"I think now for African-Americans and blacks, when they tell their kids they can be anything that they want to be, you can start believing that," said Gates, a fourth-year broadcast journalism student.
He said that his younger brothers, who once wanted to be professional athletes, have new ambitions: law school or presidency of the United States.
Much significance has also been attached to the incoming First Family, which is for all intents and purposes a standard nuclear family.
"Before they came into the picture, I think the only positive family that African-Americans had to look at was the Cosbys, and they're fictional," Gates said.
Hakeem Jefferson, a second-year political science student and secretary of minority affairs for Student Government, also believes that Obama and his family will do much for the image of black American families - in the eyes of black and non-black individuals alike.
Jefferson has been involved in conducting an undergraduate study on implicit closeness, or the degree to which people feel close to African-Americans. He said many respondents to the survey have been shown to hold negative stereotypes about black people, including that they do not work as hard as whites.
"Barack is the total opposite of all those stereotypes," Jefferson said.
Still, Jefferson does not believe the Obama presidency is a silver bullet for all the racial problems inside and outside of the black community.
"He can restructure No Child Left Behind, but it doesn't matter if parents aren't turning off the TVs and making their children do their homework," he said.
The student leaders agree that many changes must be made on a personal and community level before progress is to be made in race relations.
"It is wrong to be racist. It is wrong to be prejudiced. But we all have done it, whether we would like to admit it or not," Gates said.
Gaines does not believe that Obama is capable of making many concrete steps to improve the condition of African-Americans. He satirically reflected on a situation in which Obama would decree, "OK, all black people are going to get a pay increase of $10 per hour ... and all white people, you lose $3."
Gaines places more stress on Obama's role as a representative of lower-class America and a friend of single mothers, referring to the president-elect's much-publicized childhood.
In terms of race-centered issues, however, the student leaders all noted that work must still be done.
"My greatest fear is that with the election of Barack Obama, people will somehow believe that we've made it or that we've gotten there and there's no need for us to continue to fight for equality among the races," Jefferson said.