Kwabena Sam-Brew, a 38-year-old immigrant from Ghana, doubted that Nana, his 5-year-old American-born daughter, would remember the rally that effectively crowned Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee Tuesday night.
But Mr. Sam-Brew said he would describe it to her: “I will tell her, ‘Tonight is the night that all Americans became one.’ ”
Mr. Sam-Brew, a bus driver living in Cottage Grove, Minn., said Mr. Obama’s achievement would change the nation’s image around the world, and change the mind-set of Americans, too.
“We as black people now have hope that we have never, ever had,” Mr. Sam-Brew said. “I have new goals for my little girl. She can’t give me any excuses because she’s black.”
In his remarks Tuesday, Mr. Obama did not mention becoming the first American of color with a real chance at being president of the United States, and, of course, most of the Democrats who had voted for him were white. But for that very reason, many African-Americans exulted Wednesday in a political triumph that they believed they would never live to see. Many expressed hope that their children would draw strength from the moment.
“Not that we’re so distraught, but our children need to be able to see a black adult as a leader for the country, so they can know we can reach for those same goals,” said Wilhelmina Brown, 54, an account representative for U.S. Bank in St. Paul. “We don’t need to give up at a certain level.”
Alison Kane, a white 34-year-old transportation analyst from Edina, Minn., said Mr. Obama’s success as a biracial politician would have a similar effect on her 21-month-old biracial daughter, Hawa.
“When she’s out in, God knows where, some small town in rural America, they’ll think, ‘Oh, I know someone like you. Our president is like you,’ ” Ms. Kane said. “That just opens minds for people, to have someone to relate to. And that makes me feel better, as a mom.”
But pride — in Mr. Obama and in white voters who had looked beyond race, in the view of many blacks — was tempered for many African-Americans by an unsettling concern. There remains a fear that race, which loomed large in some primaries and has previously been successfully employed as a political wedge by Republicans, might yet keep Mr. Obama from capturing the White House.
“People hate black people,” said Michella Minter, a black 21-year-old student in Huntington, W.Va., referring to persistent racism in the United States.
“I’m not trying to be racist or over the top but it is seriously apparent that black people aren’t valued in this country,” Ms. Minter said. “In the last 12 months, six kids were being tried for attempted murder for a school fight, an unarmed man got 51 bullets in his body by a New York police officer, died, and no one was charged, and endless other racist unknown acts have occurred this year.”
(In fact, three New York City detectives were charged in the shooting of Sean Bell, killed in a hail of police bullets on his wedding day in 2006, and were acquitted.)
Mr. Obama’s moment seemed to unite blacks across the political spectrum, even those who had no intention of voting for a Democrat for president.
For example, Ward Connerly, a conservative anti-affirmative-action crusader and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, watched a replay of the announcement of Mr. Obama’s victory on Fox News early Wednesday “and I choked up,” he said. “He did it by his own achievement. Nobody gave it to him.”
Mr. Connerly expressed hope that Mr. Obama’s rise would boost his own efforts to end affirmative action.
“The entire argument for race preferences is that society is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field,” Mr. Connerly said. “The historic success of Senator Obama, as well as Senator Clinton, dismantles that argument.”
Mr. Obama has said that affirmative-action programs should become “a diminishing tool” in achieving racial equality, and has asked blacks to understand why such programs might engender resentment among whites, suggesting that poor white children also need a boost. Although he did not cast his victory in racial terms on Tuesday, he acknowledged on Wednesday that it might be having an effect on other African-Americans.
“Probably the most powerful story I heard was today at a conference, a woman came up to me,” he said in an interview on NBC News. “She said her son teaches in an inner-city school in San Francisco and said that he has seen a change in behavior among the young African-American boys there in terms of how they think about their studies. And, you know, so those are the kinds of things that I think make you appreciate that it’s not about you as an individual. But it’s about our country and the progress we’ve made.”
Thus far, Mr. Obama’s appeal has extended across racial lines, though to win in November he must do better in gaining the votes of white women and white working-class voters, whom he lost in Appalachia.
Yet on Tuesday, Ann Robb, a 61-year-old white school teacher from Terra Alta, W.Va. said he had won her support.
“I would’ve supported Hillary Clinton but something about Obama makes me believe again,” Ms. Robb said.
That spirit, however long it lasts, already has left some African-Americans more optimistic than they have ever been about race relations in America.
“You can never change everybody’s minds, but it is going to help a lot,” said Mr. Sam-Brew, the bus driver, referring to Mr. Obama’s victory and the enduring resistance among some white voters to black leaders.
In Harlem on Wednesday, Hector Garcia, an African-American who manages Pee Dee Steak II, a restaurant on 125th Street, said the symbolism of Mr. Obama’s victory had not sunk in until he headed to work in the morning, when he saw the excitement it had produced.
The driver of an M102 bus chatted about it with a passenger. The owner of a hair salon and eyeglass store stopped Mr. Garcia on the sidewalk. And his customers were buzzing about it over their $6.99 steak.
“A lot of people think things will be different for the black community now,” said Mr. Garcia, 48, who supported Mrs. Clinton and has a photo of her on his wall. “It’s great.”
Ronald Jeffers, who gets a good beat on Harlem’s pulse handing out fliers under the marquee of the Apollo Theater, said he heard passers-by buzzing about Mr. Obama’s victory.
“I think it’s a monumental step,” said Mr. Jeffers, 55, who said he had been friends with Malcolm X and other leaders.
The nomination is especially significant for Harlem’s children, he said, because “if they see this, they will think it’s something they can do.”
“Otherwise,” Mr. Jeffers said, “they look up to rappers.”
Jackie Almond, who cuts hair at the Pizazz Salon and Spa on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, said she was on the phone when she learned of the victory and broke into screams.
“I was like, ‘aaaahhhh,’ ” she said. “Never in a million years would I have thought this was possible.”
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