I quietly celebrated on Thursday, July 28, 2016, when Hillary Rodham Clinton formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination to be their candidate for the November Presidential election. For me personally, this is an event whose time is long overdue. When even male-dominated Muslim countries can have a female head of state (Pakistan and Bangladesh), it has always galled me that the United States, a country that beats its chest about being an exemplar of democratic ideals has, until now, been unable to shatter that glass ceiling.
I’ve been a Clinton supporter from the beginning. Even when Bernie Sanders was giving her a good run during the primary, my confidence that she would prevail never wavered. In a few posts here on Daily Kos, and on a few other blogging sites, I was probably a little harsh on Senator Sanders, but in the end I still respect him. Unlike his Republican counterparts who were sore losers—although, considering who they lost to, I can almost sympathize with them—he did what anyone with honor and integrity would do, he threw his support to the victor. Now, if only some of his more diehard supporters follow his example, things will be copasetic.
In some ways, Clinton’s nomination, and her eventual, and I hope inevitable, November victory, are events that are as important to me as Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. It means that my native land will finally be living up to its ideals. But, even more than what it means to me, what it means to my two granddaughters, ages 5 and 3, is of primary importance. Like my children, who are now in their 40s, not knowing what it was like to be a person of color in this country in the 50s and 60s, and watching a black man take the oath of president as if it was a routine event, I would like my granddaughters (and my grandson, who is 18 months old) to grow up in a country where it is commonplace for a woman to be considered fit to hole the highest office, and such an event will pass without a lot of fanfare. I want them to grow up truly believing that in the United States, any child can grow up to be president—something that wasn’t true until 2008. When they’re teens and young adults, I want stories of female oppression and disenfranchisement to be as fantastic as stories of WHITES ONLY signs on water fountains, or COLORED ENTRANCE IN THE BACK seemed like tall tales to my children.
My country, right or wrong, may she always strive to be right; but, right or wrong, it’s still my country.