Black Man in the White House

in the intense battle for the democratic nomination a year ago, my wife asked me at the kitchen table

“who do you want to win, obama or hillary?”

i rarely see things in black and white, and she doesn’t like it one bit. i go into this long winded pros and cons, without answering the question. she insists. i ended with

“i want obama to win. mainly because it’s a lot harder for a black man to win in america than a white woman”.

i am glad a black man will now run the show in the white house. mr.O, you don’t need to create miracles. just please don’t f*&@ up, lest the world forever loses faith in the color of your skin.

——

having lived the life as a reasonably well-off upper-caste life in india, i’ve come to a rude shock in the US in the very first few years. i once went to an auto dealership in shoddy used car, wanting to get pricing on a new car (in woodland hills, ca in san fernando valley of los angeles). the fellow at the dealership pretty much dismissed me, with a message to my face to the effect that i have no chance of buying a new car, i am probably illegal immigrant, and there’s no business for me in the dealership.

you are the dalit there. a very smart, hard-working dalit. you doing well in the united states is recognized and appreciated. to me, that really means that we exceeding a very low expectation of brown-skin people – and that’s to be an attendant at a liquor-shop/gas-station/highway motel. in a flippant way, we are the “projects” of the good-hearted white people.

obama is no “project”. he won with a positive vision for the country and a message that resonated through all skin colors. and his win wouldn’t have been a landslide if it wasn’t also a purgatory for american people. a detox of what george w. bush represents. a cup of green tea after a long night of johnny walker.