Two Warring Souls Reconciled: In the Age of Obama

By Richard Ivory

At the beginning of the 20th-century the Black Sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois in his classic work The Souls of Black Folk sought to summarize the state of affairs for people of color at the time. He captured the dual reality of the tainted loyalty and rage which many blacks felt towards a nation that embodied the land of dreams, but which treated them as less than human.

Du bois wrote “One feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”. As I wait in anticipation for this historic inauguration, I strongly believe Barack Obama’s ascendancy to America’s highest office reconciles these two warring souls. In so many ways Barack Obama has shown black children in America and the world that never again will race pose as an obstacle to political ambition.

However, as a black Republican I do feel torn between my own political party and the historic nature of this election in seeing “Barack Obama do” what “Barack Obama has done”. I, like so many other black Republicans believe strongly in our beliefs of smaller, non-intrusive government and individual choice and liberty. Nevertheless, we would not be telling the truth were we to deny a sense of envy and shame that the “Party of Lincoln” did not bring forth the nation’s first Black President. Despite my emotions and ideological differences with the new President, I am extremely proud of him; but even more so, I am proud, proud to be an American.

Richard Ivory is the founder and Publisher of HipHopRepublican.com