A Change Is Gonna Come

President-elect Barack Obama will take his oath of office in 63 days, becoming the 44th president of the United States of America. There are those who will claim that because the U.S. will have its first black president, white supremacy is no longer a formidable barrier to black people’s progress. A President Obama, they claim, will represent the realization of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream—because, they say, President-elect Obama’s meteoric rise is evidence that blacks are no longer judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Furthermore, they claim, the goals of the civil rights movement have been met in that, not only are blacks granted equal civil rights under the law, but a black man also heads the very government responsible for protecting these civil rights.

In this column, I will show that the above claims are categorically false. At best, they are made by those who misunderstand the impact of Obama’s victory on the fight for black freedom—at worst, they are calculated misinterpretations meant to deter the black liberation struggle from its true ends. The claim that President-elect Obama represents the realization of Dr. King’s dream and the culmination of the civil rights movement relies on a fundamentally flawed understanding of both Dr. King’s dream and the aims and goals of the civil rights movement. A proper understanding of both will illuminate several points key to this discussion.

Black people have been fighting for freedom in this country for centuries. Though each employed different strategies to achieve black freedom, every freedom fighter from Sojourner Truth to Marcus Garvey to Dr. King ought to be placed within the same tradition of black liberation struggle because all were resisting white supremacy. Historians have mistaken the distinct strategies employed by these individuals and movements to signify deep philosophical differences in goals. Dr. King dreamed of black freedom in the same way that Malcolm X dreamed of black freedom—they deviated only in their strategies to achieve the end, not the end itself. The same applies for the distinction between the civil rights and black power movements­—it is largely a superficial one. What links the two is that they were both formed in opposition to white supremacy. Both movements served the purpose of alleviating black oppression regardless of the fact that proponents of each conceptualized “freedom” differently and adopted different political strategies.

Note that under this understanding of Dr. King’s dream as well as the goals and aims of the civil rights movement, President-elect Obama does not represent the realization of either. Institutional racism still exists, and it seems ridiculous to claim that because a black man is president, black freedom will be a reality. History shows that having black people in powerful positions does not necessarily lead to an improvement in the overall conditions of black people. One need only look at the imprisonment of black political prisoners, the shooting of black men and women at the hands of the police, and the political disaster following Hurricane Katrina—all of which are sure to persist under an Obama administration—to discern the institutional barriers to black progress.

It would be unrealistic to expect the reader, especially with the little evidence I have provided, to concede the point that black oppression still exists. Some will think that perhaps all that ails the black community is the pathologies within it, not any external white supremacist factors. The reader is more likely to accept, however, that black freedom has constituted the goals of various civil rights activists and organizations, though their strategies may have differed. Therefore, even if one is under the false impression that President-elect Obama does represent the realization of Dr. King’s dream, one must similarly hold that he fulfills Malcolm X’s or Angela Davis’ dream. It seems unfair and suspicious to privilege one version of the same dream over another.

Given the historical prominence of whites in the United States, it is tempting to suggest that this moment represents the change we—all of us committed to black equality—have been waiting for. We ought to resist this temptation to overestimate the impact of an Obama administration on blacks’ prospects for equality. Obama’s victory, though it alone does not constitute fundamental change, represents a set of conditions that make the prospect of revolutionary change even more likely than before. I prefer to think of the prospect of change in terms of Sam Cooke’s 1964 song “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Change is not here yet, but it is going to come. But it never will arrive if we continue to operate under the illusion that it is already here.

Anthony Kelley is a Columbia College senior majoring in women’s and gender studies. Strength to Love runs alternate Tuesdays.

Opinion@columbiaspectator.com