As soon as Nora became aware of Barack Obama she liked to repeat his name over and over again. This is, I'm convinced, because it is a fun name for a three-year-old to say. It is ever so iambic!
She also knows what John McCain and Barack Obama look like (probably because when I am on my computer and not blogging or working I am obsessively reading FiveThirtyEight or Slate), so when I showed her this picture she was truly fascinated -- and more than a little concerned for Obama's welfare. ("That is John McCain! And Barack Obama! But what is John McCain doing to Barack Obama? He is trying to GET him! Are they playing a game?")
I did not, however, teach her how to recognize the Obama O (with the flag emblem inside). She picked that up on her own, as I discovered when I was driving somewhere with her and she announced, "Look, Mommy! That car has a flag for Barack Obama!"
Then, this weekend, Nora was helping me pack up some things for Goodwill. I had a newspaper out to read and pack things that were fragile. Nora pointed to a Pittsburgh Steeler on the front page and asked, "Is that Barack Obama?"
"Um, no," I said, and told her the name of whoever it was.
Given Nora's penchant for all things Obama, I got to thinking. Should Obama win, as FiveThirtyEight is predicting, he'll be President from the time Nora's four until she's eight. I certainly hope she gets positive messages from her neighborhood, her school, her home life, what she reads, etc., about the value of living in a diverse society. But something else that will certainly affect her perceptions of race as she gets older is that she will grow up with the status quo being that an African American policy wonk is the leader of the free world -- and for her, that'll be how it's been for the entire time she's been old enough to be aware. Despite the inherent problems of, for instance, model minority stereotyping, I have to think that's going to have a powerful impact on racial attitudes among her generation and kids who are forming their attitudes during a potential Obama administration. Whether that impact is that girls my daughter's age will attempt to use, say, passages from Lochner v. New York as pickup lines when the time comes for them to be flirting with boys remains to be seen. (According to Phil, that time is approximately 2034, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
You know, I just realized that even if Obama serves two full terms, my sons will probably only have the same vague awareness of him that I had of Reagan. :-(
Wouldn't Matthew will have a little more awareness than that after two terms? We're about the same age, right? I was eight (to the day) when Reagan left office. I don't remember much about him being president either. But I was very aware of Bush I, voting in the class presidential election -- I think those years from eight to eleven or so are pretty big.
He's one now, so he'd be nine at the end of Obama's second term. I was 8 during the 1988 election, and have a lot of memories of Bush, but not so many of Reagan from when he was in office. He was the old guy who occasionally interrupted something on TV. :-)
It just seems a little bittersweet to me that Matthew and Ben's futures are a huge reason why I'm supporting Obama, but they probably won't really remember him.
Hello there,
LOVE your blog! I will make it short & sweet. I am interested in advertising on it with a link on the sidebar.
Please let me know if you might be interested. If we can come to a fair price, I will pre-pay for 1 year.
Many thanks, cheers!
All the best,
Cassie (cassie003@gmail.com)
Post a Comment