President-Elect Barack Obama: Our Journey From Disbelief to Hope to the White House

Terry Edmonds, U.S. News & World Report

- For months, as mainstream pundits and prognosticators argued about the growing prospect that Barack Obama would become the nation’s first African-American president, I, along with many of my baby boomer African-American friends listened in semidisbelief. For as long as we could remember, whenever talk at the kitchen table or barber shop would veer into speculation about a possible black president, the conversation would inevitably abruptly end, punctuated by four final words—”not in our lifetime.”

Even after defeating the formidable Clinton machine and outpacing every opponent as smoothly as Usain Bolt on the track in Beijing, there was the edgy feeling that somehow something would trip up the brother and disqualify him from taking home the gold. It was probably no accident that many of us read our first book by the black conservative, Shelby Steele, during this campaign. It was titled, A Bound Man—Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win. Steele seemed to validate our fears.

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