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post-racial
Post-racial candidate:
ATLANTA – Standing in line to cast his ballot for Barack Obama, Andrew Young was told to wait outside until he was called. And for a moment, he froze.
Years ago, in the Jim Crow South, Young spent his youth teaching blacks how to read and write so they could pass frivolous literacy tests meant to keep them from voting. The innocent instructions of an elections clerk on Thursday set off a flashback.
"It almost felt like that was Selma again," and his days alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the front lines of the struggle for voting and civil rights for black Americans, Young said.
/.../
And it was the first time his vote might actually help elect a black man to the position.
Young and his civil rights contemporaries "never thought that this would even be possible in our lifetime," he said. "We didn't think it was going to go this fast, that it would probably be our children's children that had those kinds of opportunities."
Now 76, Young had his own unlikely career in politics. In 1972, he became the first black congressman from Georgia in 101 years. Five years later, he was appointed ambassador to the United Nations. He served two terms as mayor of his adopted hometown of Atlanta.
"I often say that marching from Selma to Montgomery, if I had said to Martin Luther King that I wanted to be a congressman, mayor of Atlanta, ambassador to the U.N., he would've thought I was crazy," Young smiled. "I don't think we were ever thinking of a black president."
Early on, Young was skeptical of Obama's campaign. He said the Illinois senator would make a good president — in 2016. Young threw his support behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom he regarded as family and, at the time, more qualified for the office.
And for a time, he acknowledges now, he just didn't think that a black candidate could get this far.
On Thursday, Young joined nearly 200,000 black voters in the state who have already cast their ballots, including many metropolitan Atlantans — an encouraging sign for Obama. In Georgia, blacks have made up a disproportionately high percentage of early voters, accounting for 37 percent, though they make up 29 percent of the state's 5.6 million registered voters.
In retrospect, it is Obama's vision and idealism, Young said, that has gotten him to this point. Race, he maintained, has nothing to do with the pride he feels toward Obama.
Sure, nothing to do with it, who's talking about race anyway?
ATLANTA – Standing in line to cast his ballot for Barack Obama, Andrew Young was told to wait outside until he was called. And for a moment, he froze.
Years ago, in the Jim Crow South, Young spent his youth teaching blacks how to read and write so they could pass frivolous literacy tests meant to keep them from voting. The innocent instructions of an elections clerk on Thursday set off a flashback.
"It almost felt like that was Selma again," and his days alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the front lines of the struggle for voting and civil rights for black Americans, Young said.
/.../
And it was the first time his vote might actually help elect a black man to the position.
Young and his civil rights contemporaries "never thought that this would even be possible in our lifetime," he said. "We didn't think it was going to go this fast, that it would probably be our children's children that had those kinds of opportunities."
Now 76, Young had his own unlikely career in politics. In 1972, he became the first black congressman from Georgia in 101 years. Five years later, he was appointed ambassador to the United Nations. He served two terms as mayor of his adopted hometown of Atlanta.
"I often say that marching from Selma to Montgomery, if I had said to Martin Luther King that I wanted to be a congressman, mayor of Atlanta, ambassador to the U.N., he would've thought I was crazy," Young smiled. "I don't think we were ever thinking of a black president."
Early on, Young was skeptical of Obama's campaign. He said the Illinois senator would make a good president — in 2016. Young threw his support behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom he regarded as family and, at the time, more qualified for the office.
And for a time, he acknowledges now, he just didn't think that a black candidate could get this far.
On Thursday, Young joined nearly 200,000 black voters in the state who have already cast their ballots, including many metropolitan Atlantans — an encouraging sign for Obama. In Georgia, blacks have made up a disproportionately high percentage of early voters, accounting for 37 percent, though they make up 29 percent of the state's 5.6 million registered voters.
In retrospect, it is Obama's vision and idealism, Young said, that has gotten him to this point. Race, he maintained, has nothing to do with the pride he feels toward Obama.
Sure, nothing to do with it, who's talking about race anyway?
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