How Obama’s triumph will inspire us black Britons

IT was like a carnival on Times Square. New Yorkers all around me, more young and black than anything else, were cheering, clapping, letting out those deafening American whoops, beeping horns, screaming until they were hoarse "Obama, Obama!", "Bush is gone".

Earlier, with a director friend, Leah Gardiner, I'd been at an election night party in Greenwich Village. It was in a nightclub, filled to the brim with young revellers, all black. Shoulder to shoulder, we jostled along to the odd soul classic and it took me back to my teenage years. A giant flat screen suspended over the dance floor was tuned to CNN for the results. At intervals, the dancers all stopped at once and looked up to check Obama's progress as the votes came in. At 9.45pm there was a rowdy cheer when Obama took Ohio.

Leah's husband is an actor, and a cast member of The Wire, the TV cop drama that every writer wishes they'd written. At the party, he introduced me to a couple of the other members of the cast, and we were soon talking about how much this election meant to them as black people, how the fact that there was a black presidential candidate was a victory for their mums and dads who had endured so much racism in the past so that their kids could reap the benefits of change.

To them, it was creating a new faith in the American dream which, someone said, they could now embrace without sounding like an Uncle Tom. Corny though it sounds, they seemed to be feeling more American.

So, that's what Obama's victory means to black Americans, but what does it mean to me, a black British man? I think it means a new way of thinking, a new beginning that will end with "black" no longer being negative. We do not have to settle for being let in the room, now we can run that room.

Black people in Britain have always aimed high but this election sows the seed of a black Prime Minister. What inspiration for our young people. Even if a teenager on an estate doesn't want to be Britain's next political leader, he cannot now escape the notion of possibility in his life.

Obama didn't lose because he is black. The young man can't use the colour of his skin as an excuse not to try whatever he wants to. To misquote the new President, yes he can. Don't just look to Barack. What about Lewis Hamilton? He gave the drive of his life last week, while sticking two fingers up to the racists.

What a difference a few days make. I'd touched down at JFK on Saturday, expecting the very name Obama to be flowing in the unusually warm air. But I wasn't quite feeling the love. As I made my way through passport control, I asked a heroically outsized black customs officer if he was excited about the election. He looked at me coldly and came back at me with: "Oh, you mean that farce that's going on on Tuesday?" I was keen to hear what he had meant but there was a huge queue behind me and his partner, another XXL-sized man, was hustling me along.

My motto is "never question a man with a gun", so an hour later I was in the city. One of the first things I do when I get to New York is wander through Broadway and check out the theatre district. Not wanting to waste a second of my week, I went out straight away, hoping to find a more positive vibe on the streets. That night, the most exciting thing I saw was a guy selling condoms with a choice of Obama's or McCain's face on the packets. His slogan: "Either way, you're going to get screwed." I laughed like a hyena.

That aside, I was soon wondering what the hell was wrong with America. Every other bar I passed had a TV the size of a truck showing non-stop coverage of the last campaign efforts but the sound was turned down, no one was watching. I couldn't honestly believe they didn't care about what was arguably the most important election ever seen but it definitely looked that way.

An American writer friend, Kara, offered an explanation. She said she thought most people cared a great deal about the election but they didn't talk about it because the super-liberal, Obama-friendly New Yorkers had been there before with sure winners - 2000 with Gore, 2004 with Kerry - and feared Obama would lose. Barack was on their minds all right, but so was the fact that he was black. Was white America really going to elect a black president?

By the time election day rolled round, though, a new confidence settled, that seemed to be blowing in from nowhere. Suddenly, T-shirts appeared, printed with Obama the smiling statesman, and queues of people sprang up in front of unlikely buildings. At 8am, I met Kara at a small post-office polling station in downtown Manhattan, to watch her register her vote.

We were shepherded into the small hall where more than a dozen booths with curtains were lined up. Kara showed me her ballot paper, which looked like something a PhD student would struggle with. Volunteers, meanwhile, tried to keep the new arrivals in an orderly queue. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. Soon one queue became six, then seven, then eight. It was hot, it was chaotic.

After a long hour, we finally got out and headed up to Harlem. It didn't seem odd to stop and talk to strangers and ask their view. I met one black lady in her eighties, who told me about her life in Sixties New York voting for Kennedy, being spat on by white bigots when she campaigned for civil rights.

Light-skinned and tiny, she put me in mind of my mother, with her checked shopping trolley and the look of a long- lived life all over her face. She kept calling me honey, loved my English accent, and never stopped patting me on the arm as we talked. She told me, until Obama came along, she never believed this could happen in her lifetime. I told her how pleased I was she was here to witness this.

At the party with my friend Leah, we were all puffed up with pride and confidence well before victory was declared at around 10.30pm. The roof came off that place. I have never been hugged by so many strangers in my life. The joy was pure and absolute. The tears on every face didn't seem odd; no one was embarrassed to cry.

We left soon afterwards, to drive to Times Square. Progress was slow because of the dancing in the streets and the swaying, yelling crowds.

My last few words are for a charming, eccentric old man, who I encountered in Harlem. He was oblivious to everyone else, wrapped up in his own little world, chanting the same phrase over and over. I got the sentiment though I did not know exactly what he meant, but I loved the sound of it. "Fat, back and baking history in the making."