What does the election of Senator Obama mean?

[zanla]

This is the perspective of a person growing up as a minority in the United States. I do not address the fear that some people seem to have because of the results of the smoothly run election. I do not address my incomprehension of some statements that Senator Obama was elected because of his race. All that I address is a small part of what this

Comments

[skyring]

Sure you're not Obama's speechwriter?

Nothing has changed, and yet nothing is the same. A few weeks ago, I stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where a sign noted that this was where Martin Luther King had stood, forty years ago. It was only a short walk to the White House, but a very long road.

Now, what I'm looking forward to is maybe another few decades down the track. One day an American with African or Asian heritage will be elected President. And nobody will think her ancestry important.

[explodingalice]

Agreed. I also look forward to a time when we can have a President (or even a serious contender) who is gay. Who doesn't have to be a Christian (or pretend to be one). Who is viewed solely on their qualifications to lead and not these things that, while they help to define us, are not the sum total of us.

I hope this for all of our world leaders.

[explodingalice]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I've been waiting. I don't have that experience, of course.

However, I grew up with an incredibly racist father. So I saw it from the other side. I saw how little he thought of the people around him who were different. I saw, also, how all the black people in my hometown lived in a different area of the town altogether. And even though my family was relatively poor, there was no comparison between my neighborhood's kind of poor and the poor of the part of town known as "The Hill."

I knew, from an early age, that he was wrong. I knew there was something bad in his mind and heart and soul that I didn't want in mine. Very young, I stopped listening.

Now we are the parents. We get to teach our children. We get to say, look at the history we have just made. What else is possible? What do you want to do? What is in your future? And we can have some honest optimism about that for the first time.