November 5th, 2008 11:51 pm

(written upon the occasion of the election of Barak Obama for President)

There are moments when you see the world shift on it's axis. When the events around you clearly and unequivocally divide yesterday from today.November 22, 1963 was one such moment. This is it's polar opposite.

No, the political reality isn't going to look terribly different...not tomorrow and maybe not even in the next four years...but something substantial is DIFFERENT. A step we had no idea how to take, much less if we were willing to take has been shakily made, and it is meaning- filled.
It is up to all of us to make that meaning something with which we can live.

I was born into a world where black men were still, regularly, being lynched from trees with their severed genitals in their mouths and set aflame for looking like our new, shiny President-elect. It was a world barely recognizable today, even in parts of the country where that reality is hardly passed, where the means may have changed, but the result is not much different. Even the most cynical Black person knows that everything after this, is new and amazing and laden with a hope many of us dared not even dream.

It doesn't put more money in the bank, it doesn't fill our poorly educated minds with the wisdom of the ages, it doesn't change our fear-filled hearts or give us imagination...but it is one baby step beyond the bounds we have always lived with...and once that baby step is taken...there is no returning to the helplessness of uselessly flailing limbs...there may be bruises and bumps, broken dishes and fingers testing those funny little plates in the walls that shock small, wet, questing digits...but no going back to passively watching the dolphin mobile hanging over our crib.

I have always been glad I was born in this country...no matter what, I knew the privilege it confers. But today, I am proud to be part of this f****d up, mixed up, damnedable, blessed country.

THANK YOU AMERICA! (now, let's get to work!!)