There are many of us still emotionally hung over from the events of this week. I still can’t quite absorb the enormity of what happened Tuesday night: The election of our first African-American president and a sweeping mandate for change at a time when so many have been beaten and bruised and knocked down, but not down for the count, as Barack Obama’s victory has proven.##M:[more]##
Rosa Parks SAT
So Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could MARCH
So Barack Obama could RUN
So our children could FLY.
This was one of the best offerings served up by the pundits on election night, and to me it encapsulates just how far the civil rights movement and the attitude about race has come in even my own lifetime. As a child in 1965, I can remember playing with my friends and choosing the “it” in tag by reciting the eeny meeny miny mo rhyme, and what we were catching by the toe was the “n” word. Of course, we all said it in ignorance, without even knowing what the word meant, but the point is that the word was socially acceptable in those days. The rhyme eventually morphed to the more politically correct “catch a monkey and then a tiger by the toe.”
While the slings and arrows of racial name-calling are not entirely put to rest, we have come such a long way and proven how much we have grown up as a people in an election where race ended up having very little to do with the result as much as choosing the person best-suited for the job.
You could see the pride radiating from the face of Oprah Winfrey, practically sobbing her eyes out on her friend’s shoulder, and also in the tear-filled eyes of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was there beside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on that fateful day in 1968 when he was assassinated and the voice of the greatest civil rights leader of all time was silenced. The ghost of Dr. King was in the crowd in Chicago that night as Obama gracefully acknowledged his victory. Dr. King was smiling, saying it took 40 long years, but his vision has become truth and the journey continues.
My eyes were welling up too, partly in recognition of the watershed in history Obama’s victory represented, but also because I was thinking of his grandmother, that loving woman who raised him after his own mother’s untimely death, and how unfair it was that she died just two short days before seeing her grandson elected to the highest office in the land. She had fallen so ill in the last days of his campaign, and it was probably all she could do to hold on so long, but still, you would think that a deal could have been made with the powers that be to grant another 48 hours or so.
Thinking of Obama’s grandmother who helped raise him made me think of my own grandmother who lived with us for years and helped raise me. The power of a grandmother’s love cannot be underestimated no matter who the child. “It’s okay, Mom,” offered my own son, “his grandmother is watching all of this from heaven.”
Will is a boy who loves to be on the winning team, whether it is in sports or presidential politics, so he feels vindicated that his team won this time as well and he played a role in it, by coming with me to Wicoff School to push the buttons to mark my votes. This is an election where he did feel he had a stake: ever since he heard Senator McCain declare that he would keep U.S. troops in Iraq “as long as it takes,” he was afraid he would eventually be drafted and called to battle. Obama’s election comes to him as a huge relief.
Meanwhile, Katie, who turned 18 just a couple of months ago voted for the first time in her life, and I am thrilled that it was in an election that was so history-making. They’re saying that the Obama victory will inject a new spirit of political participation by young people, and I say amen to that; it’s high time the apathy and general feeling of malaise ended.
Obama’s work is clearly cut out for him. He will have to bear the burden of overly optimistic expectations; there is so much riding on his shoulders and so many people ready to criticize, that he will have to take care not to be discouraged — it will be easy to disappoint and fall short.
One commentator said he worries about Obama’s soul, and how he may be forced to sell a piece of it in order to make things happen. I don’t worry about Obama’s soul. He has an even higher authority to have to answer to, and that is his two young daughters, who I believe will help keep his priorities and integrity intact. He is a father who loves his children, and that helps me have faith that he will protect the future of this country, because it is their future he is protecting as well.
My greatest worry is not so much for Obama’s soul, but his safety. There are enough ideological fanatics, just plain crazies in this world who would feel they would derive a certain glory by going down in history with their names linked to his. For the sake of this country’s future, I pray that doesn’t happen.
