At the End of the Day Race Matters

Barack Obama has just endured his most difficult month since entering the White House. Although the recession is expected to slow in the coming months, the number of unemployed workers has not stopped growing and neither has the number of people disappointed with a stimulus plan that is slow to take effect. The approval ratings are fraying. Health care reform, which has quickly become one of the president’s most important battles, is being attacked on all sides. Conservative Democrats, the famous “Blue Dogs”, continue to announce their discontent with their leader and the Republicans can finally see a way to bring the president down to earth. “This will be his Waterloo,” A Republican Congressman said recently. The end of Emperor Obama!

But healthcare reform isn’t the only battle he is fighting. On Capitol Hill, the United States is again struggling to overcome a history of racism and bring another minority leader to power. Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican immigrant of humble origins, a “girl from the Bronx” whose parents didn’t speak any English, will soon penetrate the exclusive ranks of the Supreme Court justices. She will sit on the highest bench in the land every year for the rest of her life and become one of those historic characters that, more than any other, embody the continuity of the state, shape the face of institutions, and uphold the framework of power.

Should we give credit to Barack Obama for a decision that serves to extend his own personal power and to reinforce the lessons learned in November? Remember that Obama is, at the heart of it, part of a rising force of minority leaders working to loosen the iron grip of the bastion of Anglo-Saxon Protestant males in Congress and in government. They are fighting the status quo, despite the efforts of the Republican Party; Capital Hill and the White House are slowly becoming truer reflections of the people of the United States.

A transfer of power seems eminent and advisories of Obama have recently circulated a crazy, desperate rumor: Barack Obama’s birth certificate cannot be found in Hawaii or anywhere else in the United States. Instead, his enemies postulate, he has born in Indonesia. Even though the facts do not support these accusations, opponents are convinced that a president as socialist, as progressive, as different as Obama simply cannot be a true American. Seeing Sotomayor in a Supreme Court justice’s robe will tear down this old world of Protestant, white domination even further, opening the door to the America of tomorrow.

That is what they fear the most.