NOW, as I shake off a headache from so much unexpected, hard crying, I feel that after two hundred and thirty two years the final missing piece has been found and placed into this American puzzle.
The long cracked foundation has been sealed. A black face is the face of America!
I had never felt fully part of the American family until now. I had always looked at history from the perspective of a mistreated child. I had always wondered how the words of that founding father, Patrick Henry:
[ "It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" ]
could be so hypocritically immortalized in light of the fact that these very men themselves owned human beings! I could never fully reconcile the brutal irony.
Tonight, though, it has been made manifest that no more American doors are locked to me and mine. As I held my son as he held me and asked what was wrong, I told him that I was happy. Happy that now for him greatness not only included intellectual achievement or financial success, but also the highest office in the most powerful nation on the earth.
I was happy that now his maternal great-grandmother, who fought the Klan for the right to vote, and who hid freedom riders in her home on "Number 8" in Jim Crow Mississippi, had not fought in vain. I was happy that his paternal great-grandfather, who genuflected and called eight year-old white boys, "sir," and lived a life of menial servitude while raising seventeen kids to honorable adulthood, had finally won.
I was happy to know that the last time black people collectively cried this hard was when, forty years ago, a bullet burst open the face of the face of the search for equality, and that now his sowing bore African fruit.
African! An African name! After so many African names went unremembered and changed. An African man who came to America not in bondage to anything but hope. The way it should have been. The way it is. An African man willingly cleaved in a Godly manner to the hand of a white American woman and produced a descendant not steeped in the brew of oppression, and destined to caulk that fundamental crack.
I did not know this would mean so much to me.
I care about the plight of the unborn, and about the tenuous religious freedoms we have. So, how can I be happy knowing that innocent babies will continue to die?
I can do so the same way I did it the last eight years when "immorality" and infanticide increased in the last eight years. I can do so by praying to God that He work through His body, the Church, to effect change in this culture a heart at a time.
Obama's election does not for me signal the end of all hardship. His election does not mean that all problems will be Divinely washed away.
What it DOES is symbolize the fact that there is hope that in this country, with its keloid scars and twisted sinews, people of ALL races -- primarily black and white -- can grow past ingrained adversity and see each other as the same. But different!
We have loved and desired to be loved in return. We love those who love us. And those who don't. We embrace the white guy who plays basketball like we do, or who dances like we do, or sings like we do, or swaggers like we do. All we wanted was to make it known that we are worthy of humanity, and the fact that so many NON-black people had to come together and lift this symbolic individual to the highest human height, means that we are getting it!
I remember when, in 1988, Doug Williams lead the Washington Redskins to the Superbowl championship. was so proud to be black that day. His win meant that we could do it, whatever IT was. There have been a number of those moments, where door after door is knocked down, and this is the last one.
Some racists have said things like, "I'm scared if Obama wins, the BLACK gone take over!" I submit that this sentiment comes from those who know that they have not done right with the power they have had and are projecting their own unGodliness onto us.
Obama's election does not mean that white folks have to stay out of the fast lanes on the highway, and give up their floor seats and fifty-yard-line spots in sporting events. We will not raid your country clubs with booming music, spinning rims, gold teeth, and chitlin's. We have just been allowed an invitation to the American house party, and are glad to not have to any longer stare trough the window.
So, rather than be defined by the thug image, the gang lifestyle, we have President Obama -- cool, dignified, brilliant, clean-cut, erudite, straight, true to who he is, and in love with one dark-skinned, kinky-headed woman, and living in the same house with his kids.
50 Cent, you don't define me! You never did, but I shake you off! P.Diddy, Pacman, T.O., O.J., Snoop Dogg, American Gangster, drug dealer, dropout, deadbeat baby-daddy, you are not who I am. You never were, but you never will be.
Get off the stage! Put the mike down! Pick up a book!
My son will not emulate YOU. My daughter will not desire you!
'Cause we got a brand new, funky, President!!* Gimme Five, America!
*James Brown
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