"Mount Obama" ?

Well, care to take a nice vacation and visit a historic mountain this winter? Escape from the cold (whatever happened to global warming by the way?) and take a trip to the West Indies island of Antigua and climb Mount Obama! What?! Good question, but it's true---apparently the prime minister down there is so inspired by the "historic" victory of an American presidential candidate, that he wants to rename his island's highest mountain---all 402 meters of it---Mount Obama. Really? I mean, come on, the guy hasn't even been coronat-....oops, inaugurated...yet, and he's already got at least one elementary school, probably two, named after him, and now a mountain in the West Indies? Not, by the way, that I'd be particularly impressed by being named after a 402 m hill in a country that the vast majority of Americans couldn't even point out on a map, but still... The point is, the whole aura of the jokingly termed "Messiah's" historic election is really going too far. Sure, if Obama has a successful one- or (God-forbid) two-term presidency, even if that's by liberal standards, I can understand naming a school or two, a highway, even an airport after him---Bush #1 got that, after all. But let me say very clearly that merely being the first black man to win the U.S. presidency does not qualify any person to be adulated to the extent that Barack Obama has been. Now, the obvious objection to my objection is that if it had been a black Republican who got elected, I would be saying the same things about my candidate. Truth be told, I would be a lot more excited about most Republican president-elects than almost any Democrat. But when it comes down to it, my goal is to hold to the standard so clearly enunciated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: the ideal that every person would be judged by the "content of their character," not the color of their skin.

And this is really where my concern lies. I could honestly care less about a mountain in a two-bit West Indian island nation. But I do care when many Americans, and apparently a few people around the world, start to honor a man for success that he has not yet achieved. Sure he got elected, but so could any young, charismatic Democrat given the circumstances of the past election. And yes, he is the first black president, but when it comes down to leading a successful government---so what?! The thinking person should be far more concerned about his execution of the office down the road, not what he looks like. Like King implied, this should be the ideal of the equality movement, but sadly, it has devolved into a struggle where people are still judged by the color of their skin, not the content of their character---it's just the reverse of the oppression that King faced, and it's just as bad for progress toward the goal of true equality.

Just the other day I watched the film Glory Road, which I highly recommend as both a good movie and a good lesson about true triumph in the struggle for racial equality. The film tells the story of a college basketball coach in Texas who was the first in the country to start and sub black players only during an NCAA championship game. The story is more than one of the steps in the long course toward racial equality, however. The story is one of a coach who was determined to win, and who stepped outside the lines of the way things were done in order to find the very best talent and craft a team that could do so. His team did not win, however, because it had a coach with the moral courage to start black players, admirable as that was. It won because it had a coach and eventually an entire team that was devoted to hard work, constant practice, and playing fundamental basketball. As might be expected in the time frame of the sixties, especially the sixties in the South, the team faced criminal discrimination and hate, but they chose in the end to pull together to work together---black and white---for victory. In the end, it was not about proving that they had the right skin color to win, it was about proving that they had the mental toughness and physical talent to win, regardless of color.

Barack Obama's election was another step in the what has been a long course toward a country that does not discriminate based on the color of a person's skin. I understand the significance of this step. But I will only respect Barack Obama as a president and a leader when he begins to prove, as president, that he has the wisdom and courage to lead and defend our country. Who knows, maybe Barack will be worthy of a mountain someday---but let him prove himself worthy by the manner in which he governs first. The largely unthinking, persona-based adulation of the masses means nothing when it comes down to leading a country, and I can only hope that this sad, odd level of hero-worship---a far cry from responsible civic duty---will one day be based on something solid. While I imagine that I will rarely agree with President Obama's policies, I am willing to respect him as leader---but he must earn that respect, from me and from every American.