Let me introduce you to a little boy from Africa. His family sent him to America, all by himself, to live with his siblings and realize his American dream. Unfortunately, he was living in Crenshaw, California and was devastated by the racism he saw every day. He begged to go back home but his parents believed that the United States offered him the best possible future. At 13 years old he moved to Federal Way hoping to find the America he had heard about growing up. Though he was called the "n word" by a classmate the day he arrived, it was better, he was happy and he stayed. He loved basketball and he had a lot of great friends.
High school was good. He would sit at a table with all of the black kids. Lucky for him he was an athlete so his table was "cool". While, the white kids sat at a table with all of the white kids. But it was o.k. Right? He had a great life and he was happy. Then one day he fell in love with his best friend. His best friend was beautiful! She had blond hair and blue eyes. Very different from his dark skin and dark eyes. But they were in love and that didn't matter. Everything seemed perfect. And it was.
Let's flash forward many, many years.
Flash forward another few years...
They had three beautiful children. They made sure to let their kids know they could be anything they wanted to be...well almost anything. They thought that was true for the most part. Well, my friends, now it is.
They don't even have to make the choice of whether they are going to sit at the black table or the white table. They can sit at any table they want and they can grow up to be anything they want.
*I am a republican and I am proud of that. For the first time in my life, however, I cast my vote, not for a party, but for a man. I cast my vote for this man to be the president of a country where his ideas, not his color, his hope, not his fear, his brilliance, not his pedigree, were victorious. I love my country because we stand for what is possible. This is the day that America has reached its potential for greatness. I am so proud to live in a country and in a time where I get to see history being made right before my eyes. More importantly, I am happy my kids, and my niece and nephews, get to see it. If America is about diversity then we've just elected a symbol of the nation at its finest. Try to look inward into what this country stands for, what it means, what is so great about it.
Though the inequality of the past may never be undone, the promise of an equal future has been realized.
"It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today." Barack Obama
2 comments:
Wow Jai,
That was beautifully said. It takes some courage to share thoughts that might not be that popular with everyone. How someone can disagree with your words of hope and happiness is a mystery. The true greatness isn't that we have a black president, it is that in a country whose vast majority is white a black man was chosen to lead. It says something pretty great about us I think.
I love that you care so much about my kids as well as the world all of us are living in.
This is Sophie. It was good what you said Jaime. It meant a lot.
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