It's been 12 days. And I'm still crying. Twelve days, that is, since the most historic presidential election, at least in my lifetime. A Black man was elected to the White House.
Obviously, I'm a white girl writing this blog. White liberal guilt is not the motivation here for writing about color. Although I do experience WLG. Just two of the many reasons I voted for Barack Obama are, 1) because of his qualifications. And then, 2) I am a die-hard Democrat.
I wasn't always this way. I grew up in South Carolina. The most conservative state in the Union. The Hammetts and the Holtzclaws migrated there from Virginia. Raping the virgin forests. Fighting the Native Americans over the claim of land. And burying alongside with their own blood kin, in our tiny family graveyard, with unmarked stones, the slaves that they owned. Decades and half century later, my household was pro-Nixon, White-bread (sic) and Republican. We went to church every Sunday. Two times. Morning and evening. With Sunday School and Training Union tacked on before the respective a.m. and p.m. Southern Baptist services. Add to that Wednesday night. And then if there were a revival, we were there Sunday through Thursday nights. A youth event meant Friday nights. The railroad tracks that divided The First Baptist Church and the "Black neighborhood," both literally and figuratively separated our worlds both physically and culturally. If we went "the other way" to church, we drove past their neighborhood, a series of dirt-smudged, small, white asbestos shingled houses. During summers, the church youth sponsored special Vacation Bible Schools for them. At Christmas, we opened the large fellowship hall and invited them over, presents stashed beneath the tree just for them. And if the children seemed a little too anxious to dash for the tree, if they or their parents didn't seem gracious enough, we copped a 'tude about it.
But there was also Sara. Sara Valentine. This was the sixties and seventies. And middle class families like mine often had maids. She cleaned our house and she kept me, the youngest of our three, straggling behind my sisters in age. When I was five, I asked for a black doll for Christmas and Santa brought it. She was bigger in size than me and I named her, "Sara." The real Sara was a presence in my life from the time I was in a high chair until she had to go work at the local textile mill to make more than we could afford to pay her. Years in therapy always unearthed scared, sad, little eight-year-old memories of me feeling abandoned by my older sister leaving for college and Sara leaving for another job. Truth is, these were the mother figures in my life more so than the flesh-and-blood one.
Being so young and steeped in the culture, church folks' attitude about Blacks were too subtle for me to pick up on. But I was shocked when, in my 20s, holiday dinner table debates turned to stereotypes of Blacks. How could these hate-laced statements from my father come from the same house that once had a Sara?
After leaving home and going to college, I became, for a short time, an Atlanta-based social-justice ministries reporter, covering poverty, homelessness, addiction, and other unsightly societal ills. A white, privileged young woman, I ventured into the crime-infested projects of New Orleans. The drug scene of Chicago. The rat-infested apartments in the forbidden parts of downtown Atlanta. I learned about the cycle of poverty. About the injustices of welfare that trapped single mothers who were forced to choose between going back to school and earning better pay or staying at home on food stamps so they could be with their babies. I learned from the Black pastors that I met about the pride and about the woundedness of the Black culture. And I didn't just cover the down and out.
And for the first time. My Faith. Became. Real.
So, yeah. It's been 12 days and I'm still crying. My blue eyes are watering as I write this. I'm happy. Overjoyed. It's about FREAKIN' TIME! Jesse and Al just couldn't cut it. And I didn't and wouldn't have voted for them. It's as if God or some laboratory scientist pieced together every gene and characteristic needed to make the right man president at this time in history. And he just happens to be African American.
My tears are for the embodiment of Barack Obama. The symbolism of his election is so incredibly multi-faceted. The day after the election, I wore my Obama Mama tee shirt. I looked into the eyes of my brothers and sisters of color and I wanted to celebrate with them. Mostly, I did not. I did not think it right to assume by color for whom they had voted. But I caught some of them looking at my well-worn, faded black tee. They looked into my eyes and smiled. I looked back and smiled. An African American man stood beside me in the copy shop as I asked the clerk to make a color copy of the Tennessean's front page and laminate it. He looked at me and smiled. Again, I looked and smiled back and this time, I said: "It's a great day." And, he replied: "Yes. It IS."
Perhaps it's my imagination, but African Americans have seemed to walk a little taller and with a little more pride in the last few days. I share the pride that the country we share overcame a century and a half's legacy of enslavement, of predjudice, of hatred to become color blind. I share the joy. I feel the pride. Theirs. And mine. Mine in my country. And while I'm not naiive enough to think everyone shares the pride and joy I do...We. Still. Made. It. This. Far.
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