USA: do whites now feel 'vested in the future'?

November 13, 2008

President Bush said to CNN:

The election of Barack Obama is an historic moment for our country. There are a lot of people in America who did not believe they would ever see this day.

It is good for our country that people have hope in the system and feel vested in the future and President-elect Obama has a great opportunity.

So if black folks can only feel a vested interest if "my president is black" then doesn't that imply a lot of white folk will now feel alienated? How is that good for your country?

Or is alienation only peculiar to blacks and not whites?

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America...

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."

No matter who is elected there will always be a large subset of alienated people for the same reason that the USA and UK remain largely segregated: because people prefer their own kind. A large subset of people will only feel vested in the future when they have a leader of their own kind. And the only way to solve that problem is the end of diversity and a return to racial homogeny. And that sure sounds better than the 'revolving door of the alienated' to me.

Obama said prior to the election ...

It was Michelle, Axelrod remembers, who stopped the show. "You need to ask yourself, Why do you want to do this?" she said directly. "What are [you] hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?"

Obama sat quietly for a moment, and everyone waited. "This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently," he said. "And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently."

Yep, and a large subset of white kids will now look at things differently too ...