Having been in tears intermittently every night of the convention, I still did not expect the effect of the actual nomination of Barack Obama as the democratic candidate for president.
I grew up in the boonies of Arizona, mostly unaware of racism. When I got older I became aware that my dad was a racist. In speech anyway, actions spoke differently. I don't know how much of his offensive speech was a product of his environment, but I do know that he harbored no real ill will in his heart to anyone except perhaps republicans.
Rural Arizona, at least where I grew up was a mixture of different races. I was accustomed to going to school with apaches and hispanics and often caucasians were the minority.
I've always been sensitive, perhaps a natural empath, and aware of a lot of the feelings of the people around me. So when the old apache women were made fun of by my classmates for their "squaw dresses", and the older white people talked about how hispanics needed to speak english I was deeply affected.
I would observe how the hispanics that had crossed the border were taken advantage of, how they worked like dogs in the hot Arizona sun in cotton fields owned by rich white farmers who drove around in air conditioned trucks.
I observed driving through the reservation how these people had nothing, how my best friend at school, a Native American had a one room house with a dirt floor that somehow her mother managed to keep scrupulously swept and clean.
My mother was a teacher and would explain the history of both cultures to me, and I have always read voraciously. I never understood as a child and then a young adult why no one cared about other people. I guess I still don't understand that. I read about slavery, and I read about the holocaust.
I came to understand that all of us were suffering because of oppression. I came to understand that slavery still affected us today. That when you treat other people as less than human, you do yourself no favor, because you (whoever you are) are denying your own humanity.
And in recent years I have come to understand that the hateful remnants of slavery are with us still, In the self-hate of the thugs and in the children choosing violence, in the children having children and in the fathers leaving children.
The collective consciousness is a powerful thing. We all tap in to several. I tap into my familys, my towns, my country's. What I didn't know was that the collective consciousness of my country was so very heavy with pain. Well, I did know it, but I didn't fully understand it because I have lived with that pain my entire life. It's been as much a part of me as my green eyes.
Today our collective consciousness came a step closer to healing. A huge tear was ripped into that heavy blanket of pain. I felt it. I felt some of the weight lift. I felt relief. And overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming love pouring through that tear. I have been crying all evening, I can't seem to stop. If it feels that way to me, what could it possibly feel like for our African American brothers and sisters?
Thank you Barack Obama, because, finally, the healing has begun.
UPDATE, edited and republished to add tags