Organizing for America | Ayelet Waldman's Blog: South Carolina

South Carolina

By Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon - Jan 28th, 2008 at 7:45 pm EST

Also listed in: Jews for Obama

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I thought I'd give you all a quick anecdote from my time in South Carolina. Hundreds of us were patiently waiting for Barack to give his victory speech in Columbia. It was a crowd remarkable for its diversity. White people, black people, Latinos and Asians. Young people inspired by politics for the first time in their lives, elderly people who'd all but given up on feeling that sense of purpose and idealism. As the room got more and more crowded, we diverted ourselves by watching the Jumbotron. When Bill Clinton came on the screen and they replayed his comment about Jesse Jackson's victory in South Carolina, with its implication that because so many of the voters were African-American it was somehow not areal victory, a group young people standing next to me began chanting, "Race Doesn't Matter, Race Doesn't Matter."

Within moments, the entire room had taken up the chant. There we stood, in the heart of the old South, where Confederate flags still fly next to statues of Governor Benjamin Tillman, who famously bragged about keeping black people from the polls -- "We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it," chanting "Race Doesn't Matter, Race Doesn't Matter." White people and black people. Latinos and Asians, united in our rejection of politics as usual. United in our belief that America can be a different place. United. Not divided.

Last night, at a fundraiser in Berkeley, Tobias Wolff reminded us that a person is only capable of being what he is capable of imagining. He can be only as honest, as trustworthy, as decent, as great, as the imagination that is reflected in his rhetoric. Barack demands the most from us because he demands it of himself. Race doesn't matter. What matters is character, leadership, commitment, empathy, and courage.

Let's all let ourselves imagine the day when President Barack Obama takes the oath of office, in the same city, on the same Mall, where 45 years before the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. promised us that one day all people would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Race doesn't matter.

Keep that image in your mind when you're walking the streets, canvassing your neighbors, and girding your loins to knock on that door where the Edwards sign is hanging. Keep that image in your mind when you break your fingernail dialing your fiftieth phone number on your "Undecided Women" list. Keep that image in your mind when you talk to your friends and your relatives and the people whose grocery carts bump into yours at Safeway.

Keep that image in mind, and I'll see you on the Mall in January. I'll be the one in the Women for Obama T-shirt, crying my eyes out and yelling as loud as I can.

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