I am a white American male of Jewish background, born in May of 1946 in New York City. For all of those reasons, and more, today I will be proud of my country.
I was born into a country that despite service by African Americans in two World Wars denied them many basic rights across much of this country.
Early my lifetime Jackie Robinson broke the color line in our national past-time and Harry Truman courageously ordered the military to be desegrated. I was too young to note this, although my first non-New York baseball hero, Hank Aaron, was thereby able to come to the majors shortly before my 8th birthday.
Two years later in 1956 I first encountered overt segregation on a Christmas trip to Miami, where I saw signs for whites only on bathrooms in the airport.
The time between that December day and my high school graduation in 1963overlapped with much of the Civil Right era - Little Rock, the universities of Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi, and the events of Bull Connor in Birmingham overlapped with my senior year. That summer began my own activity in Civil Rights, including participating in the ugust 28 March on Washington.
But this is not about me. I have lived through this period of change. This is about my country.
In my life there have been many changes that made me proud of my nation. These included the laws of the Johnson administration, the decisions of the Warren Court, the actions of my age cohort in helping bring an end to a mistaken war in Southeast Asia. I lived in New York City at the time of Stonewall, and despite the current antagonism of some against gays have seen their rights and dignity expanded. I saw voting extended to those required to serve in the military, and the rise of the environmental movement, and so much more. It includes witnessing the willingness of our Congress to terminate the Nixon administration, an action which brought to my notice and that of the country the magnificent Barbara Jordan.
I have also witnessed far too many wrongs in my country. That includes the war against which so many came to protest in the 1960s. It includes the aforementioned war in Vietnam as well as our current debacle in Iraq. Those of my generation have seen the rollback of some of the gains of the 1960s, the unfortunate continuation of racism through code words and actions, of sexism in the unwillingness to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, the election of unqualified and often mean and small minded people to high office, including the presidency of the United States. I have lived through the rise and glorification of selfishness, both of individuals and of our nation in its international policies.
Today we will elect a president. He is in the eyes of the world a black man, even though he is equally white. His blackness has brought forth overt expressions of racism, of religious intolerance. And it is good that they are now in the open, so that we can realize that we have not totally overcome our past.
Yet despite that, despite the attempts to scare and intimidate people, we are already seeing massive numbers of people waiting to vote, and those long lines are not created by eagerness to vote for his opponent, or even to vote against him. Yes, he and his campaign have been skillful in registering and turning out those who would support him. But it is so much more.
True leadership is able to inspire us to a greatness we might not imagine by ourselves.
I am white. My nephew is married to a Black woman. My wife's niece is half Native-American. We are all part of the same variegated population the makes up the incredibly diversity of this nation. And today we will elect our first president who is not merely another White man.
Some will vote for Obama precisely because he is black. Others will vote for him for his policies, or in opposition to his opponent and/or the current administration.
No matter the reason, today will mark an important moment in our history, in our national consciousness. Today we take another, an important, step towards making ourselves one nation, the UNITED States of America.
It was fitting that Obama had his last big event in Manassas, for near there began the serious fighting of our war with ourselves, which was in large part about race, but also about our national identity. The Civil War forced us to recognize that too many of us still thought of ourselves as citizens of states, not of the nation. n unfortunate legacy of that was how common such an attitude still was a part of the region in which I now live during the period of the Civil Rights movement. Symbols matter, and to have a Black man bring tens together a crowd several times the size of the combatants of that first major battle is important.
When we awaken tomorrow and go forward, there will be those who are bitterly disappointed, and those who will still fear and hate. But the actions we as a nation have been taking since early voting began and which culminate on this day of national election marks a going forward from which we will never turn back. My students - white, black, other colors, all kinds of mixtures - will have as a model someone who truly demonstrates that anyone born a citizen can aspire to the highest office in the land.
My words matter little. They are the bloviations of one person who is at times old and worn out. Barbara Jordan told us "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total." That is part of how I feel.
But perhaps I can say what I mean in far more simple terms, a variant of the words for which Michelle Obama received so much criticism.
I have never been more proud of my country than I am today.
So let me end as I began, with an expression of hope, of affirmation.
Today I will be proud of America.
Peace.