Old is the new Black

With the election of Barack Obama, America proved a few things to the world. It showed that it has moved beyond its divisive racial past and showed that it was both ready and willing to elect a black President. This is despite the endless lecturing we all had to endure about the resilience of the racist, white American. During the presidential campaign, Obama insisted that John McCain would play the race card, and try to tell voters to stay away because he didn’t look like the other Presidents on American money and in American history books, even though the honourable McCain never did. Pundits insisted that Obama’s race was an obstacle in his way to the White House. CNN spent many nights probing the effects of “race in the race” and how it may impact Obama’s electability. And voters had to watch news clip after news clip where reporters would dig up some idiot who said they can’t vote for Obama because of his middle name, and then insinuate that this is indicative of a larger trend. In the end, all of this worrying, hand-wringing and race-baiting was for naught. On Election Day, Obama’s race helped him. The exit polls show that only 9% of voters said race was an important factor to them. Not exactly a huge racial barrier for Obama to have to overcome. But of those people for whom race was important, 53% of them actually voted for Obama. Obama benefitted from being black! So much for racist America, eh? Unfortunately, the candidate who actually had the societal handicap was not the black candidate, but the old one. While nearly absent from the discussion during the campaign, age turned out to be a much greater factor in this election. A whole 15% of voters said it was an important factor to them and 77% of those people voted for Obama. Whereas Barack Obama’s race actually helped him, John McCain suffered greatly because people didn’t want to vote for a person of his age. But where were the nightly specials on age discrimination? Where were the advocates for the aged? Our society was so preoccupied with the potential for racism to hold Obama back that it missed ageism completely. Yes, with the election of Barack Obama, America proved to the world a few things. Sadly, first among them was that while America won’t judge you on the colour of your skin, it will judge you on the number of wrinkles in it.