“The right kind of tears"

Oh—I wish you could have been here!

Tuesday night, and all night into Wednesday just past dawn, I wish you could have joined me for the election night returns. It was, as one of my students call things that in the 1980s would have been deemed “awesome,” epic.

I went to the American Embassy party—it was fine and festive. I walked in and there was a huge arch of red, white, and blue balloons. Each table was decked out with balloon donkeys and balloon elephants for the two parties. There were banks of computer screens available to check how the polls and the returns were shaping up. TV screens hung from the ceiling. Hundreds of people there to see how history would take us. The strangest part of the party was a “mock debate” between two people posing as Senators McCain and Obama. Did they really think we wanted to watch imposters mouthing the rhetoric that has over-stimulated us over the last 20 months? Oh well. Then we had a speech from the Ambassador to Jordan (a KA parent) and then a video conference with some scholars and former ambassadors. Frankly, I high-tailed it over to the buffet for the free food—word on the street was that they had mini-hamburgers. The word on the street was mistaken! It was a fine buffet of Arab foods, and as I walked around I noticed more Jordanians than Americans—a little strange since it was a night for the American elections.

I got back to campus after midnight, and I was set to stay up all night. The night wasn’t really going to get interesting until after 2 AM when the eastern-standard time zone polls closed. Several of us hunkered down for the beginning of the calling of the states. It was, of course, slow going for awhile, and then around 4 AM my time, my home state of Ohio was declared as an Obama victory. I still didn’t know what to make of the race, and I looked anxiously toward 5 AM when I was to open up the Dining Hall and see who showed up at this ungodly hour. Would any teen-ager actually show up so early of his or her own volition???

I went over in the dark at 5, and before long, streams of students in their pjs were coming in. I turned on the TV with the 10X8 foot screen, and soon more and more of them were coming in. The pace quickened and there was pulsing energy in the room about when the announcement might be made of Obama’s victory—then all of a sudden, there was this CNN count-down and it came. Just like that. The announcement came that Barack Obama had clinched 270 of the electoral votes.

I wasn’t quite prepared for the flood of emotions in the room at that time. There were about 8 American adults in the room and about 85 KA students. There were 93 of us in this room riveted to the announcement that history had just been made.
And the reactions had nothing to do with policies or ideologies. There was a palpable feeling of joy in the room.

This blog entry is also not about partisan policy or ideology or which “side” won, because at that moment that I watched the election returns here in Jordan with (seriously!) the dawn coming up behind our fancy big-screen TV, it was clear: America had won.

America has won. And from out of nowhere, in the midst of these adolescents cheering this new President’s victory, the adults all dissolved in tears. I think Wendy started it. But then it wasn’t but a second before Tristan, then me, then Nancy, then Peter—oh my, we found these tears rushing down our cheeks.

What were we feeling exactly? Yes, each of us had voted for this candidate, but again, this had little to do with the policy/ideology side of an election. It was so much more. It was about history, about hopes, about missing and loving the United States, it was about a lifetime of watching election returns, about solving problems—I have never felt anything quite like this. For the next hour, maybe more, the urgency of Lee Greenwood’s classic song, “Proud to be an American” soared through my brain.

We waited, as did the rest of the waking world, for the John McCain concession speech, and the emergence of President-elect Obama. The adults in the room ranged from ages 23 to over 60. Earlier that day I had wondered how I would stay awake. I had shot out of bed at 4:20 a.m. so excited I could barely stand it. All day I had been yawning anyway, but I knew I couldn’t miss a moment of this day. I had gone to the gym to read some magazines on the treadmill. One of the magazines was from the pile my father had left from his Jordanian sojourn, a magazine about the National Park Service. I thumbed through it on the treadmill, and came to an article about a new, upcoming park site for the home of Washingtonian Carter Woodson.

Woodson is one of those people who have fallen through the cracks of history. He lived from 1875-1850 and is the first notable chronicler of African-Americans. He never married—too consumed by the study of history, a friend of his once said. He received a Phd from Harvard in 1913, only the second African-American to do so, following only W.E.B. DuBois. And yes, he had been the son of slaves. Woodson worked tirelessly for decades to promote the teaching of “Negro history.” But few people—black or white—cared much. Woodson wrote around 1920: “With most people the race question has been settled. The Negro has been assigned the lowest drudgery as the sphere in which the masses must toil to make a living. Insasmuch as the traducers of the race have “settled” the matter in this fashion, they naturally oppose any effort to change this status.” But by documenting history, and teaching history, Woodson believed he could initiate change.

Here I was watching that beautiful family emerge, and “unsettle” the race question. As the cheering thousands in Chicago’s Grant Park viewed it first-hand—we all witnessed the unfolding of a new age. Martin Luther King Jr. had promised America, “A change is coming,” and now it is here. Wendy turned to me and said, “I am so proud to be an American.” One of the other adults said, “I need to go back to my apartment and just have a good cry. But thank goodness, it’s the right kind of tears.”

All 93 of us were silent as we hung onto every word of Obama’s speech, hearing the echoes of Lincoln and King in the cadences. At the end of the speech our students were on their feet cheering. What were they cheering? I think it was as simple, as un-ideological, as the audacity of possibility. I had a long talk with one Jordanian friend who said, “I envy your country as you get to make history again and again.” Jazi, this kind librarian here called me during the day and said, “Congratulations Mr. John on your hope!” Another friend said, “the America the world loves came back last night—an America that has the capacity to achieve the impossible.”

We witnessed the accession of a black man to serve as President. He will live in the White House and work in the U.S. Capitol building—two venerable structures built, at least in part, by slave labor. The first African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, and 389 years later, on November 4, 2008, Virginia, the old capitol of the Confederacy, offered its vote Barck Obama.

After classes on Wednesday, as any good political junkie would do, I watched more television news. I saw the spontaneous, peaceful celebrations in Harlem, Los Angeles, and Howard University (here they traveled the same streets that in 1968 many left burning) rejoicing. But it certainly was not contained to the shores of the United States. One of my most astute and perceptive students, Raja, said to me, “Mr. John the students are acting like it’s our President. He’s talking to Americans.” Yes, that is correct, but look at what this says—there is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, selected as their leader a black man of modest origins, the son of a Muslim. This place, this America, exists. We should not put limitations on possibility or on hope. Even if this is only a fleeting feeling, it allows us to dream, to wonder, to stake a claim.

One great guy, Fawzi, called out, “Mr. John, I want a hug!” I don’t know why he did, but hey, it was that kind of morning. Wendy leaned over to me as we picked up breakfast dishes, “I loved when I looked over and saw you crying. Who knew we would feel like this?” It wasn’t hard—you saw the shots of Jesse Jackson and Colin Powell, their faces relieved, overwhelmed, stunned and thankful.

It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of knowing what has come before. The emotional, historical baggage. Our tired young people joyfully shouting at the TV screen never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.

This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. The election brought the return of a country we thought we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.

For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its emotion. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.