A Tranformational Moment

As evidenced by the range of comments to my previous blog entry, my classes represent a microcosm of the nation -- maybe more Obama supporters who are happy and elated about last night's victory, but also a sizable group of McCain backers who are disappointed, though maybe not surprised.

I'd like to share a few thoughts about this election and try to place this within a context of the concepts and principles from media law.

Let me say upfront that President-Elect Barack Obama resonates with me on many levels. Like him, I am bi-racial -- his father was African and his mother was white; my father was Latino; my mother was Japanese. We both have law degrees and have studied and taught law classes. I also admire his commitment to social justice and the reasoned approach to finding solutions to tough problems. OK, enough about me.

After the founders fought Revolutionary War and after the framers arduously wrote the U.S. Constitution, it's important to remember that African-American slaves did not have the right to vote and were not considered citizens. Worse, they were not considered human. We know this because of the Three-Fifths Compromise in the Constitution and because of the terrible history of discrimination against African-Americans. Think about that -- people like you and me who were not considered human.

By the mid-1800s, the nation was on the verge of collapse, in part because of slavery. The Civil War shattered the Union, as southern states seceded. But the Union prevailed, and passed the the Civil War Amendments -- the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The 13th Amendment (ratified 1865) outlawed slavery in the United States; the 14th Amendment (1868) gave the newly free slaves the same privileges and immunities as any citizen; and the 15th Amendment (1870) granted African-American men the right to vote.

With vast numbers and the right to vote, many African-Americans helped elect the first two black U.S. Senators in the 1870s, Hiram Rhodes Revels and Blanche Bruce, both Republicans. Interestingly, the Republican Party at the time was the political party of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Democratic Party, which included the Ku Klux Klan, that sought to prevent blacks from voting, sometimes through violent means. When the Democrats returned to political power in the 1880s, they instituted a number of obstacles to deny blacks the right to vote -- poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, etc.

So, even though black men were granted the right to vote in 1870 and they exercised that right for about 10 years, the white majority decimated that right through Jim Crow laws in the late 1800s and into the first half of the 20th century. It became a right only on paper and not in practice.

African-Americans were not able to exercise their right to vote, without unlawful obstacles, until after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas State alumnus. Before a joint-session of Congress, President Johnson spoke of the grave injustices to African-Americans throughout American history.

"At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed...

"This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: 'All men are created equal,' 'government by consent of the governed,' 'give me liberty or give me death.' Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives...

"Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes. Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write...

"It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation; but emancipation is a proclamation, and not a fact. A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is un-kept. The time of justice has now come."

You can read the transcript of LBJ's address and listen to his speech at this link.

So, when Barack Obama was elected U.S. Senator from Illinois in 2005, he was the fifth African-American senator in the U.S. Senate. In fact, he is only the third African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

And now, Barack Obama is President-Elect. The first African-American and first bi-racial president. Regardless of your politics and regardless of whatever fears you may have about him or his policies, this election is a transformational moment in U.S. history and world history.

Before this election, the conventional wisdom was that only white men could be elected to the presidency.

But that has been shattered. Now, anyone one can truly aspire to the highest office in the nation. Anyone -- of any color, of any gender -- can hope to lead our nation.

The historic campaign of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination also serves as evidence that our nation is changing. Her campaign also helped shatter the conventional wisdom -- women, too, can aspire to lead our nation.

Consider Barack Obama, bi-racial and African-American -- he would not have been considered human in the 1700s, he would have been turned away from a voting booth simply because of the color of his skin, he would have been subject to threats and violence, and he would not have had the educational opportunities to attend college and law school. Now, he has been elected to the presidency.

This is the hope and the promise of America. As LBJ said, America is not just clever words or empty theories -- it is America. It is who we are and it is who we have become.

Thank you for reading.