For weeks, I have tried to articulate or express what this Presidential Inauguration means to me. As a journalist with an insatiable quest for all things worth discussing, all things amazing, all things controversial...I found myself at a loss for words about all this. Until today. I have a unique perspective on race. I am an African American, raised not necessarily to be proud of the color of my skin but to transcend the stereotypes my race represents.
I was raised in a white neighborhood, taunted on my way to grammar school just five blocks away. One time, I was even pushed.
One night, while asleep, I was awakened by a rock coming through my bedroom window. Thrown by my white racist neighbors.
In high school, I was ridiculed because of my proper dialect and my unawareness of hip hop fashion. I was black, but had grown up in a white world, with no black friends....and in high school, they make sure you know you are different.
So I have never really been proud of being an African American...or relished in the symbolism of what my ability to have a job, let alone in television means, when my family tree leads to slavery.
I couldn't, because I was too busy explaining why I talk like this and I why I live like that.
As I matured, I learned to appreciate what it means to be African American. Coming to this country as slaves, shackled, whipped, beaten, raped, separated from our families, men not allowed to raise their own child. I began to empathize with the struggles of being black, rather than being condescending about them.
But now, there is no more frustration, no more fight, no more fear about the limitations my race could possess.
Today, with millions around the world and in the Nation's Capitol, I watched a black man sworn in to the presidency. Reporters sometimes losing eloquence in their speech as they reveled in the sight they said they have never seen before...1.4 million people, on the National Mall, to witness history.
For me, he is a man from Chicago, like myself, who has dreamed for more than he had, like myself, who was raised by wonderful women, like myself, who has Black skin, like myself.
I have no limitations, no fear. I have grown from a child called nigger on her way to school, into a woman, with black skin with nothing to hold her back.
I am an an African-American and I am proud. Today, more than ever, it makes sense.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm sure what you're feeling is the same emotion being felt by people across the country, and around the world. What we, as a nation, experienced today was unlike anything in our history. Finally, after hundreds of years of oppression, of fighting for civil rights, and of living in fear---the African-American community took a huge step into equality when Barack Obama took the oath of office.
ReplyDeleteWhat's more, is that our new President is heading into office with the highest approval rating of any Commander-in-Chief...EVER. I think that definitely speaks to how far, we as a nation, have come---and how loud the voices of the next generation are.
When I'm not playing the part of a non-partisan journalist, I embody the qualities of a left-wing hippie from the Pacific Northwest. I was living in Illinois when Barack Obama first ran for Senate, and for the first time, I found myself believing in a politician. A politician who shared the same values as I did. A politician who wasn't afraid to defend his liberal agenda, and who wasn't criticized for it, but embraced. By the time he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the world knew Barack Obama was going to be a star.
Does his inauguration mean that the racial problems facing our country are over? Unfortunately, no. We still have a long way to go until we can unconsciously do what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached and judge someone by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. And I would be lying if I didn't admit that I was nervous a crazed gunman would try to assassinate President Obama before his Oath of Office was complete.
Still, we can't let what's happen in the past dictate our future. Can America change? As our new President would say, "Yes we can."