In the 2008 presidential election, I cast a symbolic vote for Barack Obama. I would have eagerly done the same for Hillary Clinton.
I believed deeply in the need to confront the lingering and corrosive racism and sexism that haunt the promise of democracy and equity that the U.S. represents (but has yet to achieve).
My vote for Obama had little to do with the hope and change that drove his campaign. I am far too skeptical of politicians to believe that policy will follow rhetoric. But I did hope that a bi-racial president and his family of color and eloquence would conjure a daily picture that refuted the hushed (and even flagrant) racism that still runs through the American Dream.
Four years later, it is palpably obvious that this picture works in an opposite way—reinforcing
