A Rough Road Ahead: What’s Facing Barack Obama

In about a week, history will be made in America.

Barack Hussein Obama, a 47 year-old senator and Harvard Law School graduate from Illinois, the son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan, will be inaugurated as the forty-fourth President of these United States.

For the first time in this country’s 233 years of existence, an African American will be the leader of the free world.

I’m sure that I join the countless millions of people when I say that I never thought that I would see a black man become President in my lifetime.

And I am not some elderly bitter guy who has experienced nothing but segregation, racism, and bigotry throughout much of my life – I’m in my early forties, relatively young in the grander scheme of things.

As a black male, I never personally saw any “Whites Only” signs or burning crosses (except on TV), and I was always able to sit at any lunch counter I wanted or on any part of the bus that I pleased. I also went to integrated schools and lived in integrated neighborhoods.

In short, I am one of those who have reaped the benefits of the work that Martin Luther King and others in the Civil Rights Movement painstakingly put in.

And yet, I still didn’t think that a black man could ever become President. I felt that too many white Americans – deep down – were too entrenched in the mindset that they were somehow better than anybody black to accept someone who was not Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant as their supreme leader.

Even if it was subconscious.

And even if they were too ashamed to admit it.

It was not until Obama won the Iowa primary, a state that is 97% white, that I began to take him seriously for the Presidency; I think the rest of the country felt similar to me in that aspect.

By the time November came around, it was clear to me that America wanted a change from eight years of George W. Bush and his policies, and it was clear that more than enough whites were looking at the character of Obama rather than his skin color.

That, I think, was what led to Obama’s landslide victory.

However, before all the celebrating, tears of joy, and renditions of “Oh Happy Day” that is sure to come in our nation’s capital this January 20th commences, let me state this…

While I am very happy that a black man and a Democrat is going to take over the White House, to think that Obama is going to be an instant savior who will solve everyone’s problems quickly, as quite a few people seem to believe, would be a mistake.

A big mistake.

Here is why – beginning the day after he takes the oath of office, after the parade and all of those inaugural balls, Barack Obama faces an extremely tough job ahead of him.

Any president taking over a country that’s in its worst economic crisis in over seventy years, with huge conglomerates either on the verge of bankruptcy or going bankrupt, whole neighborhoods being foreclosed, and unemployment projected to go into double digits for the first time in decades, would have a rough job trying to turn this country’s fortunes around.

Indeed, we Americans are not in a recession; we are in a depression – that’s what this is.

It may not be as deep a depression as the one in the 1930’s (at least not yet), but with people all over these United States losing their livelihood, savings, and homes – some even committing suicide like this family in Los Angeles, CA’s San Fernando Valley a few months ago – this crisis is undoubtedly more than a simple recession.

That, my friends, is what Obama has to face starting on January 21st.

And it will not be easily remedied. According to an MSNBC story, our President-Elect warned in a speech that this mini-depression could “linger for years”.

I, for one, hope that people don’t start turning on Obama if things don’t start getting better right away. This man, and his administration, needs time to turn things around, and I am going to give him that time.

I certainly hope that you will, too.