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I have been very quiet today, because I have been embarrassed to say that I am more than a little ambivalent about the last 12 or so hours and the 21 months that preceded them.  I campaigned for Obama in New Hampshire, spending several weekends knocking on doors and having long conversations on porches across the state.  Last night, when his victory was announced, I was overjoyed and tearful.  And that joy was immediately dashed when I heard (and have continued to hear) the non-stop parade of racist invective broadcast across the radio and television news desks.  The liberal commentators and reporters proclaimed "the end of racism" (pretty much everyone on MSNBC last night, but can't find any quotes), while conservatives lauded the end of blacks' "excuses" about racial discrimination.  And I have no doubt that such thoughts, which are nothing more than varying shades and flavors of whiteness and the cultural re-alignment of white supremacy, are bubbling up in the heads of people all across the country today.  I suppose, after studying the history of racism in the United States for many years, I should have seen these tenacious responses as predictable, but it still made my heart, so recently soaring with joy, sink to see it paraded in front of me.

I want to take some pleasure in this moment, but I continue to wonder whether the joy that I and others are feeling is only a displaced passion--a tentative catharsis from the illusion that, thanks to this presidential election, our consciences can now be assuaged, our privileges forgotten, and our responsibilities to ourselves and each other set aside.  Maybe Ishmael Reed's satirical vision will actually come to pass, but I doubt it.

I know my problem is the attempt to chase joy, rather than seeking peace, and to care for my soul, as Alice Walker suggests.  I suspect that right now, Barack Obama is feeling the love and adoration of the millions who voted for him, and billions who stood around the world, hoping for his election.  I can't imagine what that must feel like, but I suspect it must feel pretty good, and possibly even addictive.  I hope that he will take Walker's words to heart, and seek peace with his own soul, rather than to continue chasing the bedrock joy directed at him today.