Toni Morrison,the Nobel Prize-winning author who originally referred to Bill Clinton as the “first black president” has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.Morrison said in her published letter to Obama:
Dear Senator Obama,
This letter represents a first for me–a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.
May I describe to you my thoughts?
I have admired Senator Clinton for years. Her knowledge always seemed to me exhaustive; her negotiation of politics expert. However I am more compelled by the quality of mind (as far as I can measure it) of a candidate. I cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration, and the little I did care was based on the fact that no liberal woman has ever ruled in America. Only conservative or “new-centrist” ones are allowed into that realm. Nor do I care very much for your race[s]. I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me “proud.”In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace–that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.
When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country’s citizens as “we,” not “they”? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?
Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.
There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.
Good luck to you and to us.
Toni Morrison
Barack responded to the endorsement in a statement:
“Toni Morrison has touched a nation with the grace and beauty of her words, and I was deeply moved and honored by the letter she wrote and the support she is giving our campaign.”
I watched Charlie Rose interview Toni Morrison about her latest novel. This is an excerpt from Seattle Times book review:
[Morrison’s book, “A Mercy,” examines what might be called a “pre-racial” America, the formative years at the end of the 17th century when our forebears still had a chance of turning their collective backs against slavery. As the 1993 Nobel Prize winner shows in this slight but powerful story, many forces — economic, sociological, psychological — combined to reinforce racism and sexism before they were institutionalized.]
I think I blew an opportunity last night of sharing with my class years of cumulative research into pre-colonial American History that I was so vindicated to learn I now share with Toni Morrison.
I no longer feel so alone !
Her novel describes the climate of 17th century Jamestown-era Virginia and the London Company.
During this period, free blacks flourished and many owned slaves.
There may not have been many of them, but their legacy and families remained powerful and independent all through the subsequent centuries of war and turmoil despite governmental efforts and they produced great and learned Americans as they sustained agrarian and commercial dynasties that lasted even through reconstruction to today.
You never hear about them. Why?
I think it is a damning message we give to children that all they are is descendents of human chattel when in fact, their “race” despite momentarily having come from a technologically different universe, immediately joined the new world as equals and were never “inferior”–in fact, they were respected and treated as such, UNTIL:
The early democratic Jamestown colony became ruled by a tiny minority of elites appointed by the King.
Poor white and black indentured servants (separate from the independent merchant/farmer/shipping class of free blacks) were truly equal and racism had no part in their lives. Intermarriage was normal because they were of the same “class”.
An uprising (detailed in Toni’s book) resulted in the minority of ruling elites recognizing they were dangerously outnumbered— and theirs was a government solution: manipulating social behavior through draconian laws that demonized color so that blacks and whites would no longer join against them.
Its the institutionalization of racism and prejudice through government and laws that we continue to suffer from today. I believe our schools and students suffer from a continuation of not viewing people as united against ruling elites.
My message has always been that we as educators, are constantly reminded of principles like
to avoid ” not expecting high expectations” and avoid the “self-fulfilling prophecy of labeling” our students but we support policies that continue to divide us and discourage us based on race, and only serve that purpose for those in power as plainly as when they were first devised in Jamestown colony.
The timing of this book is propitious with our new president.
The condescending lies (or at best, omissions) perpetuated in our history textbooks that I have tried to point out over the years have been met with utter confusion, rejection, and calling me a racist!
I hope this book finally means I won’t have to keep silent and suffer ostracization.
My hope was that through education of real history, Americans would come to the conclusion that the roots of hatred are top-down and were never bottom-up and that truth would unite us in common against our rulers who only pretend to “left/right” fight among themselves in order to distract us.
If history shows governmental power is the cause of racism, then lessening its sociological and economic impact will bring us to back to the natural harmony we naturally had as equal people.
History education has failed us in this, because of wanting to preserve the same kind of power imbalance tnat started in pre-colonial government, only today it is a bureaucratic, political, and academic one–more nuanced and involving way more people than the simple Royal governors, but the evil principle and destructive human effects are the same.
I only hope that Obama doesn’t perpetuate divisiveness in our country. I really hope he hasn’t truly joined with those in power to continue to bamboozle us.
Hopefully the “change” his presidency represents isn’t merely that the power elite have now welcomed a more effective tool to perpetuate themselves, but instead reminds us that we don’t need anyone but ourselves—I hope that becomes his overt message, and if it doesn’t, the results will guide us to see it for ourselves as a nation.
Toni’s book might just open our eyes to how ‘ one ‘ we Americans once were and really should always have been, had we not accepted racial difference to seduce us into unjust power.
Education gurus preach about the teacher’s role of guarding against “social injustice”.
Top-down polices have always been its cause, they cannot be its solution. Education is the key.
Thank you Toni Morrison– I cannot wait to read this book.
I wonder what motivated the supposed 4-6% of blacks who did NOT vote for Obama.
I would like to see Oprah interview those educated blacks. —-I hope history proves them mistaken; only time will tell…I would just like to learn their motivation
Sincerely,
A New Teacher