I once was blessed to see a double rainbow at the beach. One arced across the horizon, while another hovered higher up. It appeared, in my fuzzy interpretation that day, to benevolently guard the one closest to earth.
I sat tonight thinking not about the many complexities of the current state of politics, but about how the world has changed in my lifetime; and my extended family. My father-in-law, once a man possessed of unyielding religious beliefs that shaped and confirmed his personal intolerance, has become grandfather to a rainbow of children; his love for his own broadening his mind and heart in ways that nothing else did.
Fair skinned and red haired, Grandpa has grandchildren and great-grandchildren that are part African American, Native American, and Asian American. The children in our family run the gamut of skin tones and hair textures; we are the world. But this would be no major shock, save that Grandpa is a devout Mormon who was unpersuaded, on a personal level, even after the church officially ceased open racism in 1978.
My skin is that funny shade that isn't easy to identify for ethnicity. It is that in-between tone; not quite white enough for some, just not brown enough for others. It's French and Indian genetics expressing themselves through melanin, but, really, whose business is it, anyway? My husband, a red head of Scandinavian tendencies, has so many freckles, we match in certain patchy areas. But our children look positively anemic, with almost frighteningly pale skin. I came as no major hurdle of mental and spiritual gymnastics to their Grandpa. But my sister-in-law's husband, that's another story entirely.
Oh! I remember when Grandpa discovered his youngest daughter was dating a black man. It was unpleasant and uncomfortable to watch him angry and barely resisting the temptation to use words to describe his daughter's paramour that he instinctively knew would be rejected by many in the family. I was embarrassed for him. His anger, shock, disgust, and personal humiliation through that time were only very thinly veiled. I shudder to imagine what he must have said in private with his wife.
But my sister-in-law was in love and, despite my father-in-laws best efforts at being a royal prick, the young man, too, was in love, brushing aside and soothing the animosity radiating from my father-in-law like an over-stoked, glowing, red-hot wood stove. Eventually they married and had a passel of beautiful mocha-skinned boys and one amazingly gorgeous little girl with shocking auburn hair! You have rarely seen a Grandpa so doting and indulgent. Then my husband's niece married a wonderful man of Asian decent and increased our rainbow with a young man with blond hair and almond eyes. The rainbow became a little larger.
As Grandpa spent increasing time babysitting, he softened and then melted into a man who, I think I would not be incorrect in saying, has managed to overcome systematic ingrained ethnic discrimination to see children of every color as his own; as humans, regardless of the packaging. And this one thing, this one man's journey beyond his pervasive conditioning, is huge. It means that there is hope for our world, regardless of how many people see the packaging instead of the person.
One of my nieces married a Latino man, may he rest in peace, bringing another band to our rainbow of colors, with children of beautiful, myriad, combinations of skin tone and hair colors.
Josephine Baker, a visionary in so many ways, had her rainbow tribe of 12 adopted children from around the world. She refused to perform for segregated audiences and was in such demand that even Las Vegas eventually bent to the force of her personal will.
In my warm-fuzzy moments, I like to think of this first generation as the highest rainbow I saw that fine day; and the next generation, with who knows what wonderful combinations, as the second rainbow, protected by those who traveled the road earlier.
To bring it full circle, since this is a political blog, Obama's nomination is both a sign and symptom of a country that is finally acknowledging that it is the person, not the packaging, that counts.