About voters, not the man in charge
Lynne Varner wrote about President Obama’s election and inauguration as a triumph for minorities, especially African Americans, and the much-deserved credit they merit for that epochal change in America [“In the footsteps of many,” editorial column, Jan. 28]. But we often lose track of what this election has actually changed in America.
African Americans have long been qualified to lead this nation. Eloquent black orators have been around since at least Frederick Douglass. Minorities have supported such leaders ever since they could vote. These conditions haven’t changed.
White Americans have.
The concept of Frederick Douglass as vice president was impossible given the racial attitudes of the time. Presidential campaigns as recent as Jesse Jackson’s failed because of how many white voters would simply not vote for a nonwhite candidate.
In the past, when white voters had the chance, in the secrecy of the voting booth, to support full equality, they turned it down and caused both political parties to nominate only white candidates. Every time. For 220 years.
In 2008, sufficient numbers of white voters chose to do the right thing so we, the people, could elect the right person. That is the change, long overdue, that vindicates everything we have fought for all these years.
— Jon Shaughnessy, Bellingham