Why I Am Excited and Concerned about a Barack Obama Presidency

I include myself among the millions in our country who are very excited by the prospect of a Barack Obama presidency. I am also a Christian, deeply concerned with issues of racial justice in the United States. As a white person, I know the undue privileges I am afforded merely by the color of my skin, and I understand that confronting and disrupting modern-day white power in the United States is very difficult. And while I am excited by the prospect of a President Obama, I am also nervous-nervous that an Obama presidency will set back the ability of white people in this country to come to terms with the fact that, in United States culture, white is still right and people who are not white face enormous challenges merely because of their race. My fear is that the more cynical among my race will say, "A black man just became the President of the United States. How can black people continue to talk about their oppression or the unfair advantages we whites have?" In other words, I worry that the fact of a black president will convince the majority of white people that black people, as a race, have "made it," and that racial justice is therefore suddenly and magically no longer an issue.

This is not so. This is not so. And we who are Christians must continue to remind others that a black president does not ensure racial justice for the other thirty-five million black people in the United States. Barack Obama’s presidency will not change the fact that white people are never referred to as "a credit to their race," and that communal, cultural, and yes, religious segregation has now become a de facto situation although it is no longer lawful. I am nervous because I wonder if the United States having a black president will give whites one more excuse to put on blinders and pretend that race matters ended in the 1960s.

In the midst of my concern, I also have hope. I am hope-full because I am a Christian. But I also have hope because Barack Obama not only represents the racial progress the United States has made in the past forty years-although there is still so far to go-but also because he, himself, is able to articulate the racial issues facing the United States in a more nuanced and effective a way than any previous president. His now well-known speech on race relations, "A More Perfect Union," brought to the fore issues from both sides of the racial divide. He was able to articulate black anger and frustration alongside the white inclination to name programs like affirmative action as "unfair." In other words, he is not content to take sides in divisive racial issues, and moreover he took both sides to task, arguing that white people must listen to and respect the anger of black people, while black people must not continue to blame whites for their problems (or at least not all of them). Not being black, it is not for me to speak to the second half of that equation, but as a white person I can gratefully echo Obama’s emphasis on the need for white people-and particularly white Christians-to understand the sins of our past and the effect they still have today. So in the midst of my nervousness I am hopeful that a President Barack Obama will not let the conversation on race end with "A More Perfect Union," but rather that he will open up and help us all to unpack the racial issues that are always lingering just below the surface in the United States. I look forward to Barack Obama’s presidency because I see the potential for it to address some of the deepest wounds of this society.

As we move into this final week before the election, may we all look with hope toward the future, whatever it brings. And may God be with all of us-and with whoever our new President will be-as we continue to address racial and other societal and cultural injustices.