November 2008
My fifteen-year-old son doesn't like to hear of my doubts about President-Elect Barack Obama. He just wants for once in his young life to feel good about his president and his country. But had I been among that Grant Park Chicago crowd at Barack Obama’s election-night victory speech when he announced, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible…”, courage would have required me to have raised my hand as one of the “doubters.” But I was not in the crowd that night. Instead I was home with my partner, our teenaged kids, along with the “he’s-not-my-boyfriend” boyfriend of the elder teen. We had arrived back in the house just in time, ordering pizza in route, to arrive in front of the TV set as voting sites closed across California.
Initially, we had tried to find a “crowd” with which to celebrate Obama’s election, but our brief trip to a gathering at an art center in San Francisco ended abruptly. Upon entering the center, two giant screens displayed the CNN coverage of the elections and our son immediately gravitated to one. Once the rest of us found our seats, however, the other screen began to display a series of colorful images of unspecified “Third World” peoples performing various ceremonial rituals. Especially astute in manners of cultural appropriation, my partner, Linda, whispers into my ear impassively, “What does this have to do with the election?”
Nothing as far as I could tell, but this was a Bay Area artists’ celebration, which implied “partying” could mean anything. That night it urged the crowd of artists and arts aficionados to join a ritualized circle dance. Lakota drum at its center, dozens of (mostly white) people joined the circle, bouncing up and down to a quasi- American Indian rhythm, some yelping out in a manner I imagined an untrained ear might consider primal. And with that, my family and I rose from our seats and left.
“Consciousness spoils your time,” I always say to my students; but, none of us were having a good time that night, including our kids who by now are used to these sudden conscienced departures from public events. Even they, certainly old enough to begin to cultivate their own political views, were uncomfortable with the circle dance because as Chicanos they were raised to know what is Indian and what is not.