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Unreal
My wife asked me how I could sit through so much of the convention coverage last night, and at first I couldn't figure it out.
True, it was very much a pre-packaged deal - as they all are - with the obligatory video "documentary" segments, well-written but "riskless" speeches, "cute" jokes and all the other stuff that sent me running to the counterculture in the first place years ago.
But this was different.
This was not the Grammys, or the Academy Awards, or the Emmys, despite the general resemblance.
No, this was the Democratic Convention, and all the black family members that were heard from last night are related to someone who could very well be the next President of the United States.
Of America, that is.
I'm younger than the candidate, but it still seems unbelievable to me that the country could have changed this much in my lifetime.
So I was generally stupefied watching the proceedings, although I guess it might be easy to forget just how incredible the idea seemed less than a generation ago.
And it's nice to think about how much the country has changed - you know, without
referring to the slide toward authoritarian, reactionary, one-party
rule represented by the current administration.
I've been thinking so much about how this nation has become almost unrecognizable to me over the past eight years, that the true implications of an African-American with a real shot at the presidency kind of escaped me.
Until last night.
Comments (1)
I was thinking as Michelle was talking about Barack talking about the distance between the america that should be and the america that is and how we accept the distance in between. I was thinking that his appearance on the scene has actually dispelled the illusion that racism was bigger and stronger in our country than was actually true. He says we are not as divided as we seem to believe we are... He saw it... He knew. I knew it too I happen to be white and I was dating a black man who had fought to educate himself to pull himself out of a life of gangs and drugs. I told him then that I had written to Barack Obama and asked him to run for president. Now up until that moment the fact that Barack was black was actually something I kind of overlooked... I saw and heard him speak and I thought I want this man to be our president. I went to my computer and sent him an email on his senate site and asked him to run. This man I was dating... when I told him that I asked Barack to run for president he said 'you are crazy. America will never elect a black man president'. It had never occurred to me until that moment... the issue of race. I said 'yes, they will elect him president, not because he is black but because he will be a great president'.
I am from the Chicago area and I noticed this year when I started traveling back there for work... just in the grocery stores and in general that there seemed to be just a little more love and relaxed energy between people black and white, more smiles, a little more openness. I do think Senator Obama's rise on the scene has helped us all to see that we are not as divided as we thought we were. This is already amazing leadership.
August 26, 2008 7:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
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