We were immediately awash in the criticisms by the pundits and even people here that the Democrats "wasted a day" and put on a "boring" spectacle on the first day of the convention in Denver.
Those who say that, however, are simply tone deaf.
Yes, Senator Kennedy did give a courageous speech and he was an inspiration to us all.
But, it was what Michelle did that was the most amazing.
Yes, her speech was awesome and well-delivered. But, you could have summed the whole thing up in one single phrase--a phrase that embodied the genius of her act; the genius of the entire Obama campaign.
She said, "I stand before you as a sister."
One phrase understood by two audiences in two different ways.
What this "sister" did was reveal herself in all her complexities by trying to show herself as being "American" without denying her blackness.
W. E. B. DuBois once wrote:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . . . One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963)
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
The Obama's will not break. They are made of a mettle that one only finds in the souls of black folk.
John McCain was not the only one to be held captive. McCain was a POW for 5 and a half years. The Obama's have been held captive within the borders of their own nation under a culture that treated them as second-class citizens for their entire lives. One need only look at the media double-standard, or the skewed state of the race, to see the effects of that culture.
The Republicans and the media syncophants have a few more weeks to lash them and beat them down and accuse them of not being "real Americans," but they will not break their spirit.
I support Barack and Michelle Obama because they know America better than I ever could understand her. Michelle, is more than a "sister," she is a wife and a mother and this whole event is so pregnant with change for America that only a fool could not see it.
If people do not "know the Obama's" by now, they simply are not listening.