I am so proud to have seen this day. I am so proud to live in a time when America, the land of my home and my heart, has shown a small glimpse of its wonderful promise. I am so proud to be able to tell future generations that I lived in the days when a black man became President of the United States of America.
I am not sure why President Obama's story is so moving to me. I am not sure why I relate to it so strongly. I do not know why I teared up while I watched the inaugural speech and saw the millions of Americans gathered on the Washington Mall, listening to their newly elected leader.
Perhaps it is because I identify myself with two persecuted groups: the Mormons and the Native Americans. Perhaps it is because I am a believer in the enduring strength of the human spirit, which belief was vindicated in great measure today. Perhaps it is because, throughout my whole life, I have stood on the privileged side of race and wished, desperately, that I could erase the divide, and give to all of God's children the opportunities He intended us all to have.
Perhaps it is because I have seen myself as an unwilling member of an oppressive group. My face looks more like the Custers and Klansmen of the past than it looks like the Martin Luther Kings and Ghandis. I don't want to be one of that group, or at least I don't want that legacy. I wish I could disown the past insults to humanity that are part of the history of the Anglo/Saxon tribe, everything from the enslaving of the African continent and its people, to the wholesale execution of entire cultures in the Americas. I hate that legacy, and I want no part of it.
So it makes me feel cleaner somehow that Barak Obama is President. I still know the hateful and despicable things that my forefathers did. History doesn't change. What does change is my fear that history cannot be overcome, that oppression is permanent. Barak Obama is proof that all human beings are capable of tremendous things, no matter what oppressed population he or she comes from. It reaffirms my belief that all people, regardless of color, are overflowing in potential and are born with the seed of greatness within them. People of all races are the children of God, and have that divine potential within them.
So I think, in those ways among others, that Barak Obama's victory is not only a victory for him, or for black men, or for black people in general, but is a victory for all people, regardless of race. A victory for the oppressed and for the oppressors, and for the children of both.
1 comment:
Yes, but if we view Obama's election as the measure of how far this nation has come, what does it say about us that we would elect a black man before we would elect a woman?
But you're right about it being a victory for all people. I, too, teared up at the inauguration. Not because Obama is a black man, but because he is a good man.
How much nicer it would be if we didn't even notice he was black.
PS Hey, what's up?
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