I’ve been a strong supporter of Barack Obama for many reasons: his leadership style, his practical liberalism, his focus on the future and his goal of bringing Americans from all walks of life together to get things done. I also support him because he’s black.
Don’t misunderstand me—it’s not that I wouldn’t be supporting him anyhow, or that voting for a black man makes me feel good as a white person, or anything as surface or superficial as that. But his race and his background is important to me, because I’ve lived in so many places where largely African-American, Latino, or Asian communities were metaphorically walled off, mired in poverty and violence, with too few signs of progress making their way through the neighborhoods. And I wanted so much for children in those communities, for biracial children and children of all colors to have the most positive example you could find of why color doesn’t have to be a barrier to success, and that no matter what color you are, you can grow up to be anything that you want to be—even the President of the United States.
That’s why for me, a single comment was the single best part of the single best story that I read this week: "Tonight is the night that all Americans became one."
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