My thoughts and feelings about yesterday's historic event.
I'm still in shock really. I mean, I've often wondered how I was going to feel when and if Obama won, and I was way off. So much emotion: excitement, fear, joy...so much thinking of how to really put what happened into perspective. It's led to a fairly quiet day today...but I'll try to give you some insight into how I feel.
Yesterday was my nephew's birthday, as well as my grandmothers. She's 94 years old. To talk to her, in celebration of her life, and of an event that she never thought she'd live to see, being a southern woman from Arkansas...was unbelievable. She was so thankful to be here to see it all happen. I was so thankful for her. For all the struggles she went through, the hard times, the sacrifices she made...yesterday's victory gave me hope for my little 3 year old nephew will have a little easier time navigating life as a black man...it helped us both understand that her life has not been in vain.
It really is that deep...as an individual, I can point to my grandmothers, my great grandfather, all those ancestors and elders of mine that have worked to make my life possible. As an african american, I can point to ancestors and elders who worked and continue to work to lift our people up. it's their strength and emotion that I draw upon every day, and I felt that all last night.
As we left our viewing party...we were stopped in traffic right in the middle of Harlem, birthplace of african american critical and artistic thought, in front of the Apollo theater. There was a huge crowd of people walking all through the streets, black, white, young, old, men, women...all celebrating and singing and dancing. We stopped our car right there, hopped out, and high fived and hugged people we did not know...spilling tears of joy with people we innately shared so much with. Similar experiences, similar hardships...all those similiarities helped us to overlook the fact that we were strangers. And it was the recognition of those similarities that gives me hope for tomorrow.
Obama is not the messiah. He is not MLK. He is not a black magic bullet, here to rescue this country from the injustices of the past and deliver us to the promised land. What he is, is a sign of what's possible, and hopefully, a symbol of things to come in America.