Toure,41, Novelist, Essayist, Music Journalist on Obama
Touré: 'Obama made many black Americans feel fully at home for the first time'. Photograph: Younessi
Touré, 41, is an American novelist, essayist, music journalist, cultural critic and television presenter based in New York
I became a Democrat when I was a child, hearing stories of John F Kennedy, who was heroic, inspiring and critical in pushing forward civil rights legislation. I had not then heard Dr King's great sentence, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice", but I felt that to be true, that history had to be moving toward doing the right thing, and I felt that Democrats would lead us there. I was born almost a decade after Kennedy was assassinated.The years after his death were spent waiting for another JFK, a new, charismatic justice spreader who would make Democrats proud. It was a long wait. Between 1969 and 1993, a Democrat was president for just four years, Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, and he was not a new JFK. Clinton showed us his charisma and his heart but it wasn't until the emergence of Barack Obama that it was certain that a new Camelot was in place. Here was an inspiring man whose candidacy had a historic underpinning.
Where Kennedy had to overcome a bias against Catholics, Obama had to break the racial glass ceiling without talking about race too much. Obama's victory helped push the arc of the moral universe along its way toward justice, sounding a powerful note in America's centuries-long turbulent blues song about race. It was not the arrival at Dr King's mountaintop but it was extraordinarily important for the soul of the nation. And while it did not end racism – no serious thinker expected that – it did change the soul of America. To see a brilliant black alpha male be embraced as leader at a very difficult time of frightening recession and seemingly endless war made many black Americans feel fully at home for the first time and made many others reconsider what it means to be black. That Obama's mother is white adds another twist to the story and makes him the embodiment of modern America's multiracial society and a man with the twoness that WEB Du Bois spoke of, the double consciousness, almost in his blood.
But if the story of Obama as justice spreader was limited to identity issues and the challenge of branding and marketing a black man to a nation that still has racist impulses, well, that would be a rather sad story, which this is not. Obama has continued spreading justice for all sorts of people. Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter act, which protects women against discrimination in pay, and nominated two pro-choice women to the Supreme Court, which had had only two female justices in its history. He extended justice to gay Americans by passing a hate crimes law that makes gay-bashing a federal crime and repealed "don't ask, don't tell" in the military. He refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage act and announced his support for gay marriage. Obama also issued a directive that changed immigration enforcement, allowing people brought here as children a reprieve from deportation and a path to becoming part of the American family, a huge victory for Hispanics.
It's those social, cultural and political victories that extend liberty and justice to blacks, women, gay people and Hispanics that confirm my certainty that the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice and we have a president who's helping guide it there.
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