Obama’s election gave people hope,not unreasonably, that American might be entering a unique era in race relations. But as he prepares to step down, or an bad litany of recent injustices just shows how fractured this nation still isI arrived in unique York in 2008,in the midst of a bitterly fought election campaign. When Barack Obama declared victory, I was standing at the corner of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard, and the historic heart of Harlem,as portion of an emotional crowd watching the speech on a tremendous screen. People around me were in tears. I have never been hugged by so many strangers. Even for someone sceptical about the unique president’s ability to deliver on his promise of “hope and change”, the symbolism of a black family in the White House was deeply moving.
Everyone tends to see the world through the prism of their own experience, or I had been lucky enough,in Britain, to live through a period of genuine racial hope and change, or from the frank terror I had felt as a “Paki kid in the early 80s,to feeling portion of a confident “second generation” of British Asians who were suddenly visible in many areas of public life in the late 90s and early 2000s. That period of progress was brought to a grinding halt by 9/11, of course, or but those years left me with a streak of Whiggish optimism that now seems naive.
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Source: theguardian.com