Leon at his best: There are moments when pure feeling is also intelligent feeling. When suddenly CNN revealed its wall-sized announcement of the outcome, I experienced a blissful and unembarrassed rush of racialism. Only a hologram of Frederick Douglass would have excited me more. In that instant, forgive me, all I cared to know about Barack Obama was his color. A man of mixed race--no, an African American--no, a black man--no, let us not forget the whole odious story, a Negro--was elected to the presidency of the United States. There could be no more definitive demonstration of the American system of possibility than this; none. The oldest and most plausible pessimism of all had been retired. I recognized that this was a triumph for all of us, but before it was a triumph for all of us it was a triumph for some of us, and I was happy for them, for my black brothers and sisters, before I was happy for me. They had borne so much and waited so long. On this night they had overcome. And so my happiness was quickly complicated by a solemn sensation of respect: what were the tears in my eyes compared to the tears in their eyes? According to Obama's ideal of inclusiveness, they were the ones being included in my American narrative; but somehow I felt also like I was being included in their American narrative, and I was honored to have a place in it. Their elevation elevated me, too. Equality is universal, but the paths to equality are particular. As we glorified our similarities, I bowed my head before our differences, which are blessings when they are not curses.
...and about the Jews he said
The consciousness of tragedy can be assuaged, but it cannot be eradicated. The morning after the epiphany in America, I remarked a little sheepishly to a friend that from the way I had surrendered to my emotions, you would think that my own ancestors were slaves. And then I saw it: I had surrendered to my emotions because my own ancestors were slaves. How can a Jew, I mean a Jewish Jew, not rejoice at the election of Barack Obama? Not politically, where the road ahead may be rough; but historically, spiritually. We, too, remember the pharaohs; and we, too, choose never to hate the world; and we, too, have a hope of being saved by America. Our path to freedom was simpler, of course: we did not seek our freedom in the society in which we were enslaved. But like the black community in America, the Jewish community in America is wrestling with the lucky but harsh dissonance between progress and memory. Our experience is discontinuous with the experience of our ancestors. Their ordeals are increasingly unrecognizable to us, and we do not possess a natural knowledge of their pressures and their pains. And as our identification with victims and martyrs becomes inexact and even preposterous, we may be tormented by the suspicion that contentment is a form of treason. That is why some among us caution us not to be fooled by America, and grimly proclaim that our adversity is our destiny. I expect that in the African American community there will soon arise similar fatalists, who will remind their brethren of the tenacity of prejudice, and instruct that an African American in the White House is not the solution to all of black America's problems. They will be right, but they will be wrong. Their reluctance to challenge the bleakness in their tradition damages their sense of the actual. But the presidency of Barack Obama represents the glittering culmination of the African-American gamble on America, and the grand repudiation of the lachrymosity that is one of the foundations of a minority's identity. It is hard, but it is heroic, to believe the best when you are regularly commemorating the worst.
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