I was out all night in Oakland, California, last night. One of the most “dangerous” cities in the country, crime statistics say. Usually, that’s always code for historic black neighborhoods. This one is no different. Close to us are some of the districts and towns worst hit by the foreclosure crisis: one in three homes in parts of California are now owned by banks and not people. A generation of voters in this district remember what it was like not being able to vote because they were black. This is part of the America that has elected Obama.
My students are predominantly white. This is Berkeley, California, with some of the most progressive affirmative action [what in India we call reservation] policies, and so many, many of them are also Asian American and Latino. There are still preciously few African America students at the college level, even at subsidized public universities. My students are mostly about twenty. They have the freedom not to remember Reagan and Thatcher. They use the word “past” rarely and look only in one direction. They are a generation long described as the apathetic children of technology. They are an America that has not easily inherited the arrogance that so easily slips in with power. This is another part of America that has elected Obama.
I saw the election results come in with community organisers, activists, people who work in everyday America. Their tears are tears I recognize from the defeat of the Hindutva and India Shining. They are tears of relief and of belief. Tears that remind you that the slow, thankless, everyday work of social change has a horizon that is bigger than our individual lives. This is another part of America that has elected Obama.
There was a different America on the streets last night – in ten years of going in and out of this country, I have never seen it like this. Cars were honking, people walking the streets openly crying and celebrating with strangers, spontaneous gatherings of people at every corner, public buses lit up, hope and joy were in abundance. America doesn’t do public displays of politics or affection – it doesn’t rush out on streets for much other than sports. It hasn’t, in any case, for a very long time. Jesse Jackson, one of the most famous black Americans other than Martin Luther King, openly crying amidst millions in Grant Park in Chicago is a sight I wont lightly forget.
Not everything will change with Obama, but change they will. Race will not disappear, but it will never be the same again. Structural inclusion and inequality might not vanish tomorrow, but its pipes and planks will be made visible. America might not change all that angers much of the world towards it, but it will not be able to so easily be so naked in its power. To think of Obama is not to judge whether this hope will turn out to be real or false — the point is that it is hope at all. This hope, even if all its promises fail after a time, will have unintended consequences. Unintended consequences that, in stories of the everyday, are in the end what help people change their lives. Leaders come and go, but it is the unintended consequences of hope that leave lasting, if infinitesimal, change.
After eight years of Bush, Sept 11, a financial crisis, two divisive wars, deepening poverty, and horrid clashes on moral values, this landslide victory is the story of a scarred, hurt, and scared nation, shaken from its arrogance by a series of blows, trying to slowly look inside and heal itself. No matter what we think of America, its imperialism, its role in global successes and tragedies alike, that is a process all of us, in every country who have ever tried to think of change can understand and support.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Yes, having been witness in Berkeley last night, I felt much the same. And as someone who sometimes gets frustrated trying to persuade others to vote during elections in India, I truly felt that much of America understood the power of the vote for the first time. Not that it is necessarily about manifested change at all, but that it is about hope for change, and the challenges it brings.
…now if we could only manage that back home.
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Dear Guatam,
Yes, it demands celebration, especially as one notes the quite remarkable micro-voting patterns in parts of mountain west and suburban south, where I lived for years. Yet, conservatism as a political and social movement will recoup. That the name of Bobby Jindal is already making rounds in GOP circles as well as in editorials in Weekly Standard and The New Republic will warm the cockles of the ever-supplicating India Shining go getters. And yes, the passage of Proposition 8 is a key indicator that even Calif has a long way to go. The ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal has filed suits, but finally the backing has to be popular and social. In Minnesota, Al Franken may lose. In Alaska, the tainted Ted Stevens may also make it. So, I absolutely share your optimism, but may be one could also brace for continuing battles.
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What a moment! Thanks for this Gautam. And I think you are right, it is just what has already happened beneath that is critical. Obama became Obama, thanks to that major churning that American society has undergone in the past few months – building of course, on the past years: below-30s, blacks, antiwar movement, gay and lesbian movements, feminism, poorer whites…
Just a thought that struck me: In India, quite attuned to the Brahminical mode of samanvaya, we have no difficulty in adopting key opponents into the ‘pantheon’: An Ambedkar, A Zakir Hussain, A KR Narayanan or a Chief Justice Balakrishnan, a woman prime minister – we can have it all and yet nothing will change. In the US on the contrary, it seems to be the reverse. You could not just have an Obama. The pressure and the mobilization had to have come from outside the system, from those ‘inert masses’ who suddenly demonstrated that their inertness was less because of apolitical indifference; it was rather a cynical disbelief in the system inscribed on the soul from the days of slavery. At the moment when it seemed that something could really change, this supposed ‘apolitical’ detachment manifested in the most surprising of ways.
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I think, Brahminsm has engulfed Buddhism and other anti-brahmincal movements/trends by the art of cooption. It continues even now in various manifestations as part of the process of Hindu colonisation. But at the same time, one can’t be blind to the changes brought forth by various anti-Brahmin struggles. If our society has grown from a mere “hindustan” to India, where Mayavati can even think of becoming the next PM, one should be thankful to the sacrifices of Dalitbahujan communities.
Yes, the changes wont come that easily in Brahminically undemocratic India. We need to make it happen in every time. If Obama can make it, the Indians should learn to say “Yes we can change. We can change this Brahminical society”
Yes we can !!
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Thanks for this Gautam :) You’ve articulated the sort of hope and optimism and yes despair that made the Obama victory as enormous as it seems to be, and why his ascension carries the sort of tremendous weight it does with Americans. And Aditya, you’re right, this is exactly what I was thinking as well- how we have no trouble with accommodating the other into the ‘team’, but nothing changes.
One thing I was struck by when listening to the debates, news commentary etc, which one theoretically knows, but came home so forcefully is how loaded and scary the word ‘liberal’ is in America, leave alone ‘socialist’. And how ‘progressive liberal’ seems to connote exactly the opposite it does say in Europe. So people kept wondering how ‘radical’ and ‘liberal’ Obama would be. Another thing, for a country which has had one of the most vigorous trade union movements, state-mandated social security and public/private philanthropy the anathema towards anything seen as ‘wealth spreading’ or the provision of public services like public healthcare is massive. Sure its from the right, but I’m surprised the ordinary American has not pushed for things like a national health service for instance. I guess it has to do with the peculiar shape the American polity and economy has taken where the suspicion of government is huge and ‘private’ enterprise seen as the cure and provider of all things…whats interesting is how deep this ideaological opposition goes…
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I have been struck by the fact that here in Delhi at least, the most cynical views about Obama’s victory (“Speech-making machine”, “cleverest election campaign in history”, “expert image-builder”, “instrumentally used republican views to win over lesser red-necks, but also will act on those views”, “American chauvinist, not very different from Bush” etc.) actually expressed in my presence, have been expressed by two types of people:
a) those who have never ever been politically active; are conveniently liberal since that suits the Indian middle-classes; but who have no stake in actual transformation, rarely go on demos etc, let alone have ever organized one, or planned/executed a political campaign of the “concerned citizens” sort and
b) those who roam the corridors of power, are close to political party leadership of whatever colour, and think of themselves as king-makers, election analysts and political strategists.
Which is interesting, because people who are the opposite of both the above, who are optimistic and celebratory right now, are hardly unaware of the complexity of how political representation works. What is it that we celebrate exactly? It seems to me that what is moving us to be cautiously optimistic, is the nature of Obama’s SUPPORT, not the man himself. As Gautam’s post notes, it is the politicization, the activation, of a massive popular underclass, their belief that they own this man – this is what, as political theorists and analysts and activists we take serious note of. What Obama represents, the expectations vested in him, might well be belied, but this slow-moving mass of potent lava that has been released in the process all over the globe, it wont go quietly back into the volcano – that is our hope, THAT is what we celebrate.
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Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
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I was about to write back to some of the comments, but as usual, Nivi, you say it far better than I ever could – my sentiments exactly.
I think the difference becomes that much clearer when you look at Proposition 8 – the ban on gay marriage that did pass in california, and unexpectedly. Here was actually a case of a campaign [on the gay rights side] that did not do exactly what Obama did: it didn’t reach out to the grassroots. It didn’t mobilize or politicize across race and class. It stuck to classic liberal politics from a distance. This isn’t a critique of the gay rights campaigners who fought bravely – but a recognition of two types of electoral verdicts: one based on an engagement and transformation with people and one that never reached that far down from the rhetoric and political debates.
So, again, to just echo Nivi: I think Obama is the result of what, in a sense, is already a victory: they are Nivi’s slow moving mass of potent lava, home of unintended consequences :)
I share everyone else’s caution in terms of what he will be actually be able to do re: policy. On that, only time will tell.
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To carry forward the thread, and especially in the context of the new US administration’s orientation towards India, it may be instructive to debate the fine print in the foreign policy section of the website that Team Obama uploaded yesterday. (http://change.gov/agenda/foreignpolicy)
I find two sub sections relevant from our perspective. One heading “Seek New Partnerships in Asia”, without mentioning India, does three things. One, seeks to contain China rather bluntly. Two, wishes to renew erstwhile solid American ties. And third, calls for an ‘effective’ framework that goes beyond ‘bilateral agreements, occasional summits, and ad hoc arrangements.” N. Korea has been explicitly named, but one may read that bilateral and special arrangements with India also seem ad hoc and ineffective to Obama. Plus, India does no even figure in the immediate partnership scheme.
This is related to the other sub-sections on NPT and Nuclear Free World. Clearly, there will be pressure on India, within the framwork of real politics of course.
In short, it seems at least in the immediate context that India’s lopsided conservative, nationalistic overtures will face some challenge, even as US follows its own strong statist ventures in the liberal mould.
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Gautam,
Your experience in Berkeley seems similar to the reaction here on the east coast. Having been witness to both the 2004 election and this one, I’m tempted to say, “It was the worst of the times, it was the best of times….” Nothing short of the events that unfolded between 9 and 11pm day on Tuesday night could have resurrected the hope that Bush’s re-election extinguished. Last time the electoral map had the blue states reduced to a coastal phenomenon, like parenthetical marks hugging the map. It now appears as if those blue brackets have embraced the country tighter and in the process squeezed out the red pretty substantially.
It was very moving to share in the joy of so many people who despite knowing that Obama was likely to win seemed unprepared for the cathartic release of the actual moment. The crowds in Grant Park and elsewhere seemed awash with a sort of visceral relief. The response of African-Americans was particularly touching. Many of them, as you say, openly and silently wept. Obama’s victory seemed to provoke a depth of response that seemed too powerful for words. However, skeptical many of us on the left might be about Obama’s views on the economy and on foreign policy, it was impossible not to be sucked into the current of feeling that his victory symbolized. I agree with Nivi, that the distinction between Obama the man and what he has come to symbolize is not lost on most of us. To his credit, Obama himself seems aware of that distinction.
So the pendulum of change that seemed stuck on the far right has finally come unstuck. It is too early to predict how far the pendulum will swing or how soon it will start its swing back but it is heartening to know that it is not stuck anymore.
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Dear Gautam,
I had for quite a while regarded politics with an unhealthy dose of cynicism and sometimes just downright apathy, given that I was born and raised in a typical Latin American country where politicians promise the world to the electorate, very rarely delivering on those promises. Maybe I’ve been overly pessimistic about politics, but on election night in Berkeley, I was able to witness something I had never witnessed before in my life. I saw people in the streets celebrating with family, friends, and perfect strangers, Obama’s win; cars honking, joining in the festive environment that was just about everywhere; distant screams of joy, probably from one of the many spontaneous congregations of people that gathered in the streets of Berkeley an neighboring Oakland. What struck me the most, though, was not the actual acts of celebration. What actually impressed me the most was how hopeful people felt. HOPE. I had never before seen such hope expressed by so many people with regards to the same circumstances and with that much intensity. People were hopeful that with the end of the “Bush regime” and the election of the first African-American president in the United States–actually history in the making–years of disillusionment with the status quo were finally over. They felt that what is in store now for the United States and the American people–and the rest of the world, for that matter–is change, and change for the better. I must say that this event shook up my belief system and I was able to share in the excitement of the people of Berkeley and the rest of the United States. I was able to recognize that even though Obama will not be able to change every problem that might plague this nation and the world (and I say the world because of the implications this has with regards to the rest of the world), at least there is the hope that change will be instituted in the right direction. And Obama, most definitely, represents that hope.
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News flash that Obama has won- faces of Indian TV anchors fell, turned pale. Some life time progressives turned wordless.
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Indian TV anchors, the category of new caste genre in the ‘system of media’ prevail as the cultural symbol of racist/casteist violence that inadvertendly get expressed as the visible marks of the enterneched racism/casteism in our society. One can see the way these moving dolls of casteism/racism deliver infotainment whether it be the issue of victory of Obama, Butla House ecounter, reservation issue, Mayavati, Lalu or Hindu terrorists. The ideological caste/racist bias in their “coloured skins” lay testimony to the very nature of our “secular” national media.
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Here is an interesting article that takes head on and complicates the picture of black civil rights movement and the gay rights (apropos the point of reaching to grassroots):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/10/ED45141P46.DTL
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Thanks for this piece Prasanta.
Rather than reaching to the grass roots, it indicates the need to initiate democratic dialogues between various movements. We tend to live in a closed world; our movements follow the same path whether it be women, black, Dalit, Adivasi, gay or lesbian…
Let us open the possibility of dialogue. Let us not close ourselves inside our own ideological spaces.
perhaps that is the message it implies for social movements
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