By Stacey Patton:

Tuesday January 20, 2009: Consuming A New Kind of Black Cool

Today our nation’s capital was full of even more Obamamania as our first black president took the oath of office at the Capitol building. Yesterday’s New York Times description of the atmosphere here being a mix between Woodstock and the 1968 March on Washington was dead on.

Legions of people continued to swarm down every street that didn’t have a barrier or police car blocking it. Hundreds of thousands of people from all backgrounds emerged from metro stations and marched toward the Lincoln Memorial, full of anticipation and excitement as they prepared to witness the most historic occasion of the century thus far.

With millions of people roaming the city, it was the perfect time for legit, and some freelance, street vendors to make a few bucks. They sold buttons, first-edition Obama calendars, hats, tee-shirts, sweatshirts, scarves, cups, magnets, newspaper reprints of Obama’s November 4th election win, paintings and posters of heroic African-American leaders of the past, and so on.

Perhaps the most interesting item I saw was a grey t-shirt of the White House with a new paint job and the words “The Black House,” printed underneath being peddled by a young hippie-looking white couple. The item seemed to generate more laughs from passersby than takers.

Check out a few photos I took of consumers buying Obama mementos.

***

Saturday January 17, 2009 : Some Fun With Dead Presidents

This afternoon I hopped on the orange line and took the D.C. Metro to the National Museum of American History where I participated in the opening of a new exhibit called “Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life.”

The exhibit featured documents and artifacts from Lincoln’s life and a short documentary feature about his role in the emancipation of nearly four million black slaves. Of course, as is the case in most of these kinds of museum presentations, the exhibit was wholly celebratory and uncritical of his racial ideas about African Americans.

While Lincoln has largely been memorialized in the American imagination as “the great emancipator” who was a champion of black freedom and social equality, he shared the conviction of most of his American contemporaries that blacks were inferior. Lincoln did not believe that blacks and whites could live together, and during his presidency he supported efforts to have blacks deported from the United States. He wrote in 1858:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

I’m always amazed at how these kinds of discussions about our nation’s heroes are always conspicuously missing. When the documentary ended, I had to fight my urge to jump up and say, “Did he really free the slaves? Or did the slaves free themselves? Yes, Lincoln thought slavery was evil, but he didn’t like black people!”

But I kept quiet and spared myself from having a Kanye West moment (remember his George Bush doesn’t care about black people comment on live television?). Still, I had to give our 16th president his props for leading a war that ended slavery, preserved the Union and paved the way for the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

While at the Lincoln exhibit today, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with former presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. played over a loud speaker in the background. When I stepped up to have my photo taken with Jefferson and Washington, I noticed that Jefferson was much warmer than our nation’s first president. Jefferson immediately extended his arm and welcomed my gentle grasp. He smiled and said, “Hello, young lady,” as Washington toyed with his hat and clicked his cane against his Revolutionary era shoes.

I decided to have a little fun.

“You know, Mr. Jefferson,” I leaned into him and he tilted his head next to mine. “In your day you and I wouldn’t have been able to stand like this together in public.”

His face reddened. He seemed a bit taken aback by my comment.

“Unless of course, I were Ms. Sally Hemings.”

“My, young lady,” Washington took offense and stepped away from me and nervously fiddled with his hat. “You certainly are forward.”

Jefferson was stunned. “Mr. President, you don’t know the half,” I said chuckling as I walked away.

Below are some images I took from the exhibit.

***

Friday January 16, 2009: Feeling Left Out of Obama’s America

It’s 20 degrees and sunny here in D.C. I’m staying in a stately townhouse in the Southeast section, just one block from the Library of Congress and a few doors down from the Frederick Douglass Museum. After years of living in New York, this quiet and stillness seems kind of strange but provides a space to hear myself think without the sounds of honking cabbies, sirens, blaring Salsa music, those yappy dogs that never stop barking, and the guy who lives across the street from me who revs up his roaring engine in the wee hours of the morning before taking off for work.

Starting tomorrow this entire area will be swelling with legions of tourists. I’ve already seen a few from London and Paris sporting Obama hats and “Hope Won” and “Yes We Did” tee-shirts. Most Washingtonians I’ve talked to say they’re getting out of Dodge before the District goes into lockdown mode. My hosts left early this morning for their second home in the Poconos. They’ve witnessed enough inaugurations over the decades, but nothing like this one to come.

I started this morning with a bowl of oatmeal squares sprinkled with cinnamon and organic milk. A copy of today’s Washington Post and the latest issue of The Atlantic lay next to my bowl. Three headlines in the Post carry Obama’s name. One story in particular, “Disconnected From Obama’s America,” focuses on rural whites in Arkansas who are anxious about the president-elect’s “urban” views. And the cover of The Atlantic shows half of his profile, his eye staring confidently out at the reader with “THE END OF WHITE AMERICA?” in bold black letters. The cover suggests that the election of this black man to the most powerful position in the land has somehow triggered the end of white domination and the whole socially constructed category of whiteness itself.

Read side by side, I get the sense that a lot of whites, particularly those below the deeper parts of the South, are feeling a sense of anxiety and doom about the country’s changing demographics amid our current turmoil and strife at home and abroad with other nations of color. And I get the sense that there are whites who understand that they must cross that bridge into the next phase of a new kind of America and there are those who refuse to embrace the possibility of a beige America and in doing so are feeling uncertain about their place and possibilities in the age of Obama.

Anne Hull, the Post reporter writes in her piece that rural whites in the South are worried that our new president will not understand their way of life. Some of the subjects interviewed for her piece, she writes, understand “the cultural chasm between them and Obama’s Ivy League, biracial, global polish.” And thus, they are “set apart from the 53 percent majority that put Obama in the White House.” The interviewees complained that Obama has no history with the South and “his concern ain’t for the South.”

A man named Wayne Loewer who sports thermals, keeps a 12-guage shotgun in his house, eats elk meat and farms rice, soybeans and corn complained about the “newly emboldened attitude” of the black locals. Hull reports, “He’s heard about people cutting in line at the grocery store or doing a little victory dance at the Kwik Shop.”

Though Loewer promises that if Obama brings the country out of this financial mess, he’ll “get out in the street and fistbump with them,” his alarming comments jolted me back to the narratives of the post-Emancipation period, when southern whites complained about Negroes getting too uppity and beside themselves. Narratives and diaries of the period reveal white women complaining that the former slaves didn’t sing anymore. Whites complained about being jostled in the streets by aggressive blacks who had been enfranchised and protected by the Union Army as their lives lay in ruins.

I wonder, is this another such moment of hysteria and paranoia for a significant portion of white America? And how will they deal all this change? Will they evolve or will their fear somehow keep us hinged to old ideas and old behaviors that have kept us segregated since the Civil War?

Hua Hsu’s piece in The Atlantic argues that younger whites are feeling culturally broke, disadvantaged, and marginalized. “They don’t have a culture that’s cool or oppositional,” Hsu writes. “Pop culture today rallies around an ethic of multicultural inclusion that seems to value every identity – except whiteness.”

Urban, college-educated, liberal whites seem to be dealing with their crisis in identity and meaning by fleeing from their whiteness. Hsu contends, “if white America is indeed ‘losing control,’ and if the future will belong to people who can successfully navigate a post-racial, multicultural landscape – then it’s no surprise that many white Americans are eager to divest themselves of their whiteness entirely.”

I’m not certain what to make of these stories. I wonder if we’d be talking about a post-racial America, the end of blackness or the end of whiteness if John McCain had won. Besides, the demographic trends are still pointing toward the creation of a new kind of beige America. We will all have to navigate this new terrain and figure out how we will fit into this increasingly mobile and rapidly changing society.

In the meantime, I’m counting down the days to when I drown myself in the crowds of blended faces and be happy about change finally coming.

***

Wednesday January 14, 2009 9.49 am: Capturing the Moment

I arrived at Reagan Airport on this frigid morning, excited to embark upon my weeklong journey to capture the spirit of this very important moment in American history as it unfolds before us all. As I marched toward the baggage claim section, I flipped through my 30 year-old archive of memories in search of historic events that could match what the world will witness next Tuesday as Barack Obama leads us into an uncertain and precarious, yet hopeful future.

What I discovered in reflection, is that most of my significant memories of recent history do not live up to the expectancy that I have about this moment. My memories of the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s are all fraught with mixed emotions about what it means to be an American and what democracy itself means. In my mind, I heard former President Ronald Reagan’s voice in the mid-1980s responding to criticism for cutting funding for school lunches in poor districts. When critics pointed out that there would not be enough money for vegetables, Reagan’s solution was to, “Let them eat ketchup.”

When the words of America’s so-called “great communicator” blipped out of my mind, the next image was of four white officers beating Rodney King. Who can forget his famous words — “Can’t we all just get along?” — as the streets of Los Angeles were torn up over six days.

Then I saw Nelson Mandela pumping his fists at the air as South Africa freed him after almost 28 years in prison and the Apartheid system had come to an end. There was the raid on the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas that killed 72 people, and then O.J. Simpson speeding down the highway after being accused of killing his ex-wife and her friend.

The flashes continued. The bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. The Million Man March on the capital. Madeline Albright being appointed as the first female U.S. Secretary of State by former President Bill Clinton. The Chicago Bulls winning consecutive NBA titles. The White House sex scandal. The fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, a gay student from Wyoming. The Columbine school shootings. The tragic deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy who died at sea when their plane disappeared over Martha’s Vineyard. Halle Berry and Denzel Washington winning the Oscars on the same night!

Amid all those memories, there was nothing akin to the historic election of our first black president this past November. And I predict that I may not, in my lifetime, experience another moment like Tuesday’s inauguration.

Assef, the taxi driver from Afghanistan

I jumped in the back seat of a taxi and met the smile of an Afghani driver named Assef. “Things have been very busy these days. And they are going to get crazy,” he said as I warmed my hands by the vent below my legs.

If you take trips to D.C. often or you live in the District, you know that taxi rides are rarely silent events. You almost always get engaged in a conversation about politics, national and international, current events, or history by a driver usually from somewhere in West or North Africa or the Middle East.

Assef held up a copy of an Arab newspaper written in the Farsi language. Though I couldn’t understand the text, the images were all too striking and familiar. They were photographs of Palestinians digging graves for family members killed in Israeli strikes. There were women and men weeping in the streets and searching through the rubble of what used to be some semblance of a home.

“You think Mr. Obama can fix all this?” he asked. “Do you think he can bring some peace to my home in Afghanistan? Do you think he can fix this government’s policies toward other countries?”

“I certainly hope so, Assef.” I said to him in an anxious voice as I thought about all the problems we have right here at home.

For the first time in my life, I’m trying to move past all the negative things I remember about our recent and far distant history to be inspired by the possibility of things unforeseen. I know that I have to be realistic. We all have to be realistic about what this one man, this agent of change can do.

As I move forward on my journey these next few days, I expect to be reflective, to learn from the good, the bad, and the ugly moments of our nation’s past, to revisit old spaces and pay homage to heroes and giants, all which are intricately woven into this narrative of our evolution. And for the first time, I will participate in capturing what will be one of the greatest moments in our nation’s history.