by Courtney Ward

One of the most important things to remember after any presidential election is that the winning candidate is everyone’s new president. Such as this election, Barack Obama is not merely the president of the African American population, he is the president of the entire United States. 

It seems as though for days after this election, people forgot that with this title also comes respect. It is just as disrespectful for someone to denounce his presidency as it is for someone to rant saying, “You wouldn’t give us forty acres and a mule, so we took fifty states and the White House,” it is all equally ridiculous. 

On the night of the election, I sat in a study lounge watching television with at least sixty other people. While some of them hoped and chanted for John McCain, many were ardently in favor of Obama. I found myself somewhere is the middle, dealing with sudden admiration for Obama as an African American, as it is so often incorrectly stated, and a deep belief in McCain in a more political sense. Yet when the announcement came, I, like most of the other 740 students on Oxford College’s campus, ran out the door and into the quad to celebrate and watch the fireworks that students set off.

In the days following the election, I discussed with other students the many significant aspects of Obama’s feat. Not only is he the first president who can identify himself as part of the black community, but he also gives hope to other first-generation Americans, because he is, at least on his father’s side just that. Yet, no one said, “My president is a first-generation American,” or “My president attended school in Indonesia.” People preferred to focus on his skin color, which can be taken as a positive or negative attribute.

This is not to say that I prefer not to acknowledge his race, because in the end, it is nice to know that it is possible to have an accepted black man in the White House. It is even better to know that he is there, not only by the power of African Americans but also, and more so, by the power of Caucasian Americans, who make up such a significant portion of the voter population. 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that America is free of hate. This is still evident by the threats and plans made by Neo-Nazis before the election in Tennessee, cars vandalized in New York, the noose that hung from a tree at Baylor University in Texas and a cross left burning in Pennsylvania.

While it’s hard not to view these acts of violence as a display of what could happen on and following January 20th, Americans must think that the majority of the population will not commit such acts. Regardless of party affiliation, we must all make an effort to give him the respect he deserves as president and accept him as that for the next four years. All of this must be done with the realization that those four years will not be easy for him, and he will need the support of the entire nation in the most colorless, bipartisan manner possible.