Barack Obama - The history man

IN comes the hope, out goes the hate; in comes the loved, out goes the loathed. He strides on stage, deafened by six billion pairs of clapping hands, while Bush sneaks out through the side door.

For America, it’s their greatest substitution, like the first bite of steak after eight years of Skips; like hearing The Beatles after eight years of Boyzone. Yes, he’s finally here: another white president.

But Obama won, you say. That’s right: Barack Obama, whose father is from Nyanza Province, Kenya, and whose mother is from Wichita, Kansas. Biologically, Barack’s blood is as white as it’s black, as Kansan as it’s Kenyan. If Obama is to be the first African-American president, he’s also, equally, another European- American president.

Yet here’s the reason Tuesday’s turnout was believed to be the biggest for 100 years. Obama may not be as black as Martin Luther King, or Muhammad Ali, or Rosa Parks. He may not be slavery’s son – his father, Barack Sr, only moved to the US aged 23 to enrol at the University of Hawaii. And he may not, having been raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, have smelt the burning crosses of the Ku Klux Klan.

But he is, indisputably, blacker than any predecessor.

After 43 Jacksons, Wilsons and Johnsons, the 44th US president is from, and for, the 60 million people who don’t tick “white” on the census.

The constitution, signed on September 17, 1787, had 39 signatories – from Bassett to Wilson – and the white hegemony has continued since. Never mind president: the US has never had a black vice-president. Obama – until he becomes president on January 20 – is the only black senator, and just ten per cent of congressmen are black. To break that 43-strong white chain is historic: a huge chapter in a story that began in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, when the first slave ship arrived in America.

Legal discrimination against blacks was supposed to end in the American Civil War’s aftermath.

The 13th amendment, adopted in 1865, outlawed slavery: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,”

it said.

The 14th amendment, three years later, gave citizenship to African-Americans, and the 15th amendment, in 1870, gave the vote to black males. There. Discrimination outlawed in three quick amendments. Easy? Not quite.

The Jim Crow Laws, enacted between 1876 and 1965, were a series of state laws designed to keep black skin from white. It was everyday racism – “colored-only” toilets, “white trade only” stores – that enforced, and emphasised, difference. In Alabama, for example Obama would have been banned from white ticket booths at train stations; in Florida, he’d have been banned from white schools; in North Carolina, he’d have been banned from the library’s white area; in Oklahoma, he’d have been banned from white phone booths.

The US has a history of legalised racism.

That’s why Obama, a mixed-race man with brown skin, is significant. Just 50 years ago, he would be sidelined, shoved out by his own country. Today, he’s at the top, the country’s – and the world’s – most powerful man. Jim Crow has flown.

It’s more than a personal victory – though, of course, it is – it’s a victory for everyone, white and black, who fought to make the country colour blind.

It’s a victory for Oliver Brown and 12 other African-American parents from Topeka, Kansas, who took their board of education to court in 1954, demanding an end to segregated schools. Their victory kick-started the civil rights movement.

If Brown v Board of Education of Topeka was the first domino, starting the black rights rally, Obama’s election is the last.

It’s a victory for Rosa Parks, whose activism culminated when she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Just over a year later, buses were integrated.

And it’s a victory for Martin Luther King, and the other 250,000 people who marched in Washington in 1963. “I have a dream,” Luther King declared then, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’.” A year later, the Civil Rights Act outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment.

Now, 143 years after slavery was outlawed, 54 years after Brown v Board of Education, and 45 years after I Have a Dream, the US will have a black president. If America’s black history shows mankind’s worst side, Obama’s triumph shows that good will out, that closed minds can open. That’s why six billion pairs of hands clap.

Enoch Powell, in a considered moment, declared: “All political careers end in failure.”

History has rarely proved him wrong. This wave of hope, which Obama surfs expertly, will disappear.

Eventually, his halo won’t shine, and his time of reckoning will come. Just ask our last messiah, Tony Blair.

But Obama – whatever you think of his policies, or personality – is a good news story. Sixty years ago, he would have been banned from schools, trains and toilets. He would have been defined by race. Now, the country’s biggest office is open and Obama’s striding in, applause ringing.

One of his best-selling books is called The Audacity of Hope. His hope – and Brown’s and Parks’ and King’s, and everyone else’s – is fulfilled.