This may be corny or melodramatic. I don't know but I have been up most of the night and I feel I have to say this to every American who voted for Barack Obama.
Thank you.
Thank you for choosing change over status quo.
Thank you for taking a risk instead of playing it safe.
Thank you for inspiring rather than disappointing the planet.
Thank you for listening to the angels of your better nature and not the demons of your fears.
Thank you for proving so many wrong about America and so many hopes right.
Thank you particularly on behalf of my daughter. She is eight years old. Her mother is black and I am white. She has reached that age where she has become conscious of her skin colour and her background. She has started asking what she is – white or black. She has started asking to which group does she belong.
She understood the Presidency and the White House only through Disney and shows like "Cory in the White House". She also understood that the President was always a man and was always white. White with a white mother and a white father. Cory was black with a black father and a black mother and lived in the back.
When Barack Obama began his run and would appear on TV, I would point to him and say "see, he is like you. His mom was white and his dad was black". She became fascinated by Obama and would notice every time he was on television or appeared in the papers.
As his campaign progressed, as interest in him increased and as his eventual nomination became more certain, my daughter would mention him with increasing frequency and often ask "he is like me isn’t he?" I would always reassure her that yes, he was like her.
Today she woke up and I told her that Barack Obama – the man with a white mother and a black father, the man who was just like her – had been elected President of the United States. She might understand that office through Disney and "Cory in the White House" but today she saw a bi-racial man who was "just like her" picked by a majority of people to lead his country. Today my daughter was proud of her background.
And for that I sincerely thank you.