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hatred and suspicion that isolation breeds.
Recently, I was back in southern Illinois, driving with one of my downstate
field directors, a young white man named Robert Stephan, after a long day of
speeches and appearances in the area. It was a beautiful spring night, the
broad waters and dusky banks of the Mississippi shimmering under a full,
low-flung moon. The waters reminded me of Cairo and all the other towns up and
down the river, the settlements that had risen and fallen with the barge
traffic and the often sad, tough, cruel histories that had been deposited
there at the confluence of the free and enslaved, the world of Huck and the
world of Jim.
I mentioned to Robert the progress weÆd made on tearing down the old
hospital in Cairo-our office had started meeting with the state health
department and local officials-and told him about my first visit to the town.
Because Robert had grown up in the southern part of the state, we soon found
ourselves talking about the racial attitudes of his friends and neighbors.
Just the previous week, he said, a few local guys with some influence had
invited him to join them at a small social club in Alton, a couple of blocks
from the house where heÆd been raised. Robert had never been to the place, but
it seemed nice enough. The food had been served, the group was making some
small talk, when Robert noticed that of the fifty or so people in the room not
a single person was black. Since AltonÆs population is about a quarter African
American, Robert thought this odd, and asked the men about it.
ItÆs a private club, one of them said.
At first, Robert didnÆt understand-had no blacks tried to join? When they
said nothing, he said, ItÆs 2006, for GodÆs sake.
The men shrugged. ItÆs always been that way, they told him. No blacks
allowed.
Which is when Robert dropped his napkin on his plate, said good night, and
left.
I suppose I could spend time brooding over those men in the club, file it as
evidence that white people still maintain a simmering hostility toward those
who look like me. But I donÆt want to confer on such bigotry a power it no
longer possesses.
I choose to think about Robert instead, and the small but difficult gesture
he made. If a young man like Robert can make the effort to cross the currents
of habit and fear in order to do what he knows is right, then I want to be
sure that IÆm there to meet him on the other side and help him onto shore.
MY ELECTION WASNÆT just aided by the evolving racial attitudes of IllinoisÆs
white voters. It reflected changes in IllinoisÆs African American community as
well.
One measure of these changes could be seen in the types of early support my
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campaign received. Of the first $500,000 that I raised during the primary,
close to half came from black businesses and professionals. It was a
black-owned radio station, WVON, that first began to mention my campaign on
the Chicago airwaves, and a black-owned weekly newsmagazine, NÆDigo, that
first featured me on its cover. One of the first times I needed a corporate
jet for the campaign, it was a black friend who lent me his.
Such capacity simply did not exist a generation ago. Although Chicago has
always had one of the more vibrant black business communities in the country,
in the sixties and seventies only a handful of self-made men-John Johnson, the
founder of Ebony and Jet; George Johnson, the founder of Johnson Products; Ed
Gardner, the founder of Soft Sheen; and Al Johnson, the first black in the
country to own a GM franchise-would have been considered wealthy by the
standards of white America.
Today not only is the city filled with black doctors, dentists, lawyers,
accountants, and other professionals, but blacks also occupy some of the
highest management positions in corporate Chicago. Blacks own restaurant
chains, investment banks, PR agencies, real estate investment trusts, and
architectural firms. They can afford to live in neighborhoods of their
choosing and send their children to the best private schools. They are
actively recruited to join civic boards and generously support all manner of
charities.
Statistically, the number of African Americans who occupy the top fifth of
the income ladder remains relatively small. Moreover, every black professional
and businessperson in Chicago can tell you stories of the roadblocks they
still experience on account of race. Few African American entrepreneurs have
either the inherited wealth or the angel investors to help launch their
businesses or cushion them from a sudden economic downturn. Few doubt that if
they were white they would be further along in reaching their goals.
And yet you wonÆt hear these men and women use race as a crutch or point to
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