He said he knows having a black president represents change, but that doesn’t mean change will be produced.

“I do think that he would be a little more sympathetic to black people on issues than John McCain would,” he said. “But it’s not like he can take care of every problem black people or any people have.”

Symbolic presidency

Black voters aren’t disillusioned by the possibility of Obama, or any black man, in office. Civil rights infractions and discrimination won’t end if Obama places his left hand over the Bible with his right hand raised on Jan. 20 in front of the White House. Crime in urban neighborhoods won’t come to a halt just because a black man sits in the Oval Office. Poverty and homelessness won’t magically remedy itself either.

But simply having a black president is enough to show how far black people and the United States have come, said Curtis Stokes, a professor in MSU’s James Madison College.

“I think at the end of the day the black community in this country will be pleased to have someone who is black in the White House, even if he doesn’t paint the White House black,” said Stokes, who teaches a course on African-American politics. “But at the same time, I think people are realistic enough to know that having a black face in high office, even the presidency, will not in and of itself transform the lives — material lives — of black people in many of the inner cities of this country.”

Stokes said he isn’t sold on Obama. He questions the candidate’s health care and war policies as well as his voting record.

Still, Stokes is excited for a black candidate, just like many other members of the black community.

“I’m very pleased to be here and alive today because this is something that I’m not sure I expected to be happening right now,” he said. “This is the most important, one of the most important moments, in the political life of this country and in my own life to have a black person at this position.”

Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, said having a black president would give black and other minority youth something to aspire to and would help put a positive minority role model at the center of the American and world stage.

“For me, as a black man, I’m very hopeful Barack Obama wins because it will shine importance on the black family, on the father and on the mother that showers her joy on her children,” Johnson said.

Johnson said “it’s about time” for a minority presidential candidate to be in serious contention for the White House.

Desiree Tucker, political affairs director with the Black Student Alliance, or BSA, said to have a black candidate so close to the White House is an “almost breathtaking moment.”

Tucker said voters have to understand that, if Obama is elected, his staff won’t be completely comprised of black colleagues, to be mindful of red tape attached to donations the Illinois senator has received during his campaign and that they have to be able to wait for change that might not come at all in a four-year presidency.

But that doesn’t stop her from getting excited.

“Especially in putting together the black power rally, we have to see images of lynchings, we have to see images of police brutality, we have to see images of segregation in this country,” she said, referring to the BSA-sponsored rally that occurred Oct. 23. “And then to then turn on CNN and see a black man who may take office, seeing that change, it’s a proud moment.”

Black doesn’t mean Obama

Linda Tarver is looking past skin color.

The vice chairwoman of the Ingham County Republican Party, Tarver is a black woman supporting McCain. She said she’s proud to see a black man so close to the presidency, but she won’t be helping him set up residency in the White House.

“For a majority of these new voters, they’re coming out for novelty,” Tarver said. “People waited in lines for the new iPhone, for the Wii, for everything. So go get excited, it doesn’t take much to get excited in America. But after a while the thrill is gone.”

Tarver said Obama is “an eloquent speaker who is running for president” and said she was wary of his inexperience and “socialist” policy proposals.

Stokes said he is “wrestling” with what he will do Tuesday. He said he might vote for a third-party candidate.

Jasmine Ford, a human resources junior, entertained a short-lived bid at the MSU Board of Trustees this year as a Republican Party candidate. A McCain supporter, she said she is asked by many of her black friends why she wouldn’t vote for Obama.

“When I watch the debates, John McCain is more educated on many of the issues,” she said. “Of course Barack Obama knows his stuff, but he gives the bare minimum. He doesn’t give me the meat.”

Ford said education is one of the main reasons she is voting for McCain. She enjoys his position on vouchers and charter schools, as she graduated from Cass Tech High School, a magnet school in the struggling Detroit Public Schools system.

“Yes, it would be nice to have a black president,” Ford said. “But I’m just not there.”

Obama — the second black candidate

This isn’t the first time Americans have been asked whether they wanted a black president.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson ran on the Democratic Party ticket in 1984 and 1988, winning seven primaries and four caucuses in 1988 — including Michigan.

“The Jackson effort in ’84 and ’88 has to be recognized as historic in the same way that we understand the Barack Obama effort,” said Stokes, whose class focuses on the Jackson campaigns relative to Obama’s. “One because Jackson, as The New York Times said at the time, Jackson was the first serious effort on the part of a black person to make a significant mark in terms of the Democratic Party and presidential politics in general.”

Like Obama, Stokes said Jackson ran a campaign based on change. Ultimately, though, the minor contributions he received from white supporters doomed his candidacy.

Obama had difficulty beating Democratic opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., during the primary season in states with a large white working class, but Stokes said Obama has rallied a sizable band of white supporters, especially since he received the Democratic Party nomination.

What is also significant, Stokes said, is the level of student activism relative to Jackson’s campaign.

“Jackson had generated some white supporters and activity on campuses, but not anywhere near the level we’re now witnessing with regard to Barack Obama,” he said.

The beginning of the end?

If Obama is elected president, the United States will finally be rid of racism. The civil rights era will be at its end. Equality will radiate from the very ground Americans walk on.

This is what some members of the black community fear people will think if Obama is elected Nov. 4.

“I do have a concern that his election would lead to the belief that somehow we’re now officially in a post-racial society, when in fact it would mean nothing of the kind,” Stokes said.

“At most he’ll be there for eight years. The problems that black folks and brown folks and poor whites face in this country will not be resolved in any meaningful way by changing the face of the person who is in the White House.”

Tucker brings up the point that Obama hasn’t run away with the election. With the economy, wars and overall unpopular policies enacted for the past eight years, Obama still has yet to deliver a knockout blow to the McCain camp.

Why?

“It’s because he’s black,” she said.

“Just the other day CNN showed images of people at a McCain rally, and people had stuffed monkeys with Obama written on them, shouting ‘Osama Hussein’ and ‘Obama bin Laden’ and all this other stuff. If that’s what you see when you look at him, then how far have we really come?”