Harbus

Issue date: 11/10/08 Section: News

Waiting for election results

Whenever something big happens, people always say "remember where you were on that day," as if you will forget. On November 4th 2008, something big happened - Barack Obama, was elected the 44th President of the United States. Remember where you were that day, and where you were when it finally sunk in that our country had detached itself from its past and set a mandate for the next generation of Americans.

At 2AM on November 5th, I found myself in Central Square, watching a small group of students wind down the night's festivities after Harvard Square had overflowed with hundreds of ecstatic millennials an hour earlier. As "yes we can" echoed off the walls of buildings on the dimly lit and increasingly deserted city streets, my attention was caught by a middle-aged African-American man, who stood by himself holding a small American flag and quietly observing the scene.

On any other day, he may have seemed out of place amongst 20 first and maybe second time voters reveling in their adrenaline and alcohol-fueled euphoria. But this day was something different. The reality that we had elected our country's first African-American President was starting to sink in, and we were all excited to share in the moment.

As my mom told me on the phone, "I am really happy for your generation. For my generation, the last happy moment in politics was 1960." Barack Obama was born right around that time, on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu Hawaii, a day in our nation's history when a man of his skin color would have to ride on the back of the bus, and use different bathrooms than people with white skin. My parents were part of the youth generation that founds its inspiration in JFK, Martin Luther King and others who showed them a way out of the evils of racial segregation and discrimination that were still allowed under our Constitution.

Today's youth generation knows of the '60s only through textbooks and our parents' Bob Dylan CDs, but I believe that it is our detachment from this time that has most prepared us for the idea of an African American president. This 2008 election has incited the youth to shed their reputation as the apathetic voting demographic, with 24 million Americans ages 18 to 29 casting ballots. This increase in by at least 2.2 million over 2004 puts the youth turnout somewhere between 49.3 and 54.5 percent, meaning 19 percent more young people voted this year than in 2004.

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