Well, it's a week since Obama was elected, and I feel a little, after eight nightmare years of Bush/Cheney, like the munchkins after the house fell the first time, when Glinda says, "You can come out now!" Can we? Is it really safe? Bush is still signing executive orders and messing with the environment, and Obama isn't in power yet, really, but the image of him with his hand on Bush's back, on the day when he visited the White House and issued a statement about preparing to dismantle Gitmo, and to review overturning stem cell research limits set by Bush...well, it rocked my world. A president with integrity cleaning up the horrible mess left behind by Bush and his cronies. Can this be real?
On a sad note, the Proposition 8 passage in California unrocked my world--it stole away the thunderous joy I felt in the first hours after Obama was declared the winner, and replaced it with hurt and sadness and frustration that the same people who voted for Obama still don't get that marriage is an equal opportunity civil right, exactly like the right of people of two races to marry, and that civil right is all that matters. Religious beliefs are irrelevant constitutionally, and
I am just so angry that we still have intelligent people voting against civil rights, even as they pulled the lever for Obama. Will he have more courage than Clinton, who passed "Don't Ask Don't Tell" just after being elected? Will he rise to the moral courage of Ted Kennedy, who took a firm position on this and got a largely Catholic state to support gay marriage?
Well, we will see. I do believe in this new president and his ideals and inspirational spirit, and the miracle of his election still feels unreal, but I am fully aware that a miracle did happen, and a house did fall on one wicked witch, (apologies to the good witches out there!) and we are all going to be able to come out from behind the bushes because the wicked old witches of the Bush/Cheney years really are, at last, nearly, most sincerely, dead!
Leonore
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Obama-Nov.5th
11 am. Wednesday, 11/5/2008.
Can it be true that after a nightmarish eight years, we actually have an inspiring, eloquent, emotionally stable, mature, and extraordinarily intelligent president and vice president? I'm still rubbing my eyes.
I couldn't cry until he spoke in his speech last night to the people in the rest of the world, and then the tears began to flow.....somehow, that's what moved me the most-the possibility of healing on a planetary scale, his reaching out to everyone, everywhere, the knowledge that the horrendous fissures-the cracks on the surface of global humanity- between people of color around the world and those who have traditionally controlled them, may have the hope, slowly, slowly, slowly, of being someday healed and sealed.
And as for my nearly 16-year old son, born of a white mom and an African American father, and for every other male child of color in America who carries inside of him uncountable moments of the suspicious, searing, and unforgiveable once-overs of some of those in white America who look at him and convey only low expectations---my son, as of today, will begin to process that the president-elect of the United States looks like him, and that the people of this country of every race believed enough in Barack Obama and the promise that he can lead them, to pull a lever to vote for him to become president.
How will this take root inside of him? When?
He certainly didn't seem to get it yet when he tried once again, unsuccessfully, to get out of going to school this morning, feigning illness, to avoid a biology quiz first period. Or maybe he feels burdened by realizing that, with this election's results, there are no more good excuses left for him??????
He went to sleep at 10 pm, feeling our anxiety about the election results, and wouldn't climb out of sleep to get out of bed and really wake up when we woke him up at 11:10 to tell him Obama had won, or to hear his speech. ...
What will happen inside of him today? Tomorrow? He missed seeing the freely flowing tears of jubilation and relief on the faces of black and white and brown Americans at rallies everywhere in the country last night; well, he missed the emotion, but then, again....what 16-year old boy is comfortable with that, anyway? Especially in front of his parents, even if one of us does have the same color skin as him? (And he seemed not thrilled, although intrigued, when she warned him yesterday morning that if Obama won, she would be crying.)
As his white mom, who so wants to protect him from anyone with my skin color, who would ever seek to hurt him because of the color of his skin, and as the parent who will never really know what that kind of wound feels like, (although I can guess a little, as a lesbian mom, having experienced being told that I am not qualified to be a "good enough" parent because I am gay)---I feel such enormous hope today that everything has changed as of today. I feel foolishly like when I walk outside, that the ground we walk on will somehow feel different-that the air will have a new texture...I know that all bad things are still bad, but the sky seems bigger.
...And as his parent, and as an educator, I am so unbearably curious about what this will mean for him, or for any of the African American kids (or adults), especially men and teenage boys, now trying to digest what just happened.. I suspect it will take a lot of time to process, much of it on levels so deep inside of him, and so invisible to the eye, that we won't ever see the tectonic shifts happening....
Patience, patience, I have to tell myself....but...as for the rest of us, well, hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!we did it!
yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!
Leonore.
Can it be true that after a nightmarish eight years, we actually have an inspiring, eloquent, emotionally stable, mature, and extraordinarily intelligent president and vice president? I'm still rubbing my eyes.
I couldn't cry until he spoke in his speech last night to the people in the rest of the world, and then the tears began to flow.....somehow, that's what moved me the most-the possibility of healing on a planetary scale, his reaching out to everyone, everywhere, the knowledge that the horrendous fissures-the cracks on the surface of global humanity- between people of color around the world and those who have traditionally controlled them, may have the hope, slowly, slowly, slowly, of being someday healed and sealed.
And as for my nearly 16-year old son, born of a white mom and an African American father, and for every other male child of color in America who carries inside of him uncountable moments of the suspicious, searing, and unforgiveable once-overs of some of those in white America who look at him and convey only low expectations---my son, as of today, will begin to process that the president-elect of the United States looks like him, and that the people of this country of every race believed enough in Barack Obama and the promise that he can lead them, to pull a lever to vote for him to become president.
How will this take root inside of him? When?
He certainly didn't seem to get it yet when he tried once again, unsuccessfully, to get out of going to school this morning, feigning illness, to avoid a biology quiz first period. Or maybe he feels burdened by realizing that, with this election's results, there are no more good excuses left for him??????
He went to sleep at 10 pm, feeling our anxiety about the election results, and wouldn't climb out of sleep to get out of bed and really wake up when we woke him up at 11:10 to tell him Obama had won, or to hear his speech. ...
What will happen inside of him today? Tomorrow? He missed seeing the freely flowing tears of jubilation and relief on the faces of black and white and brown Americans at rallies everywhere in the country last night; well, he missed the emotion, but then, again....what 16-year old boy is comfortable with that, anyway? Especially in front of his parents, even if one of us does have the same color skin as him? (And he seemed not thrilled, although intrigued, when she warned him yesterday morning that if Obama won, she would be crying.)
As his white mom, who so wants to protect him from anyone with my skin color, who would ever seek to hurt him because of the color of his skin, and as the parent who will never really know what that kind of wound feels like, (although I can guess a little, as a lesbian mom, having experienced being told that I am not qualified to be a "good enough" parent because I am gay)---I feel such enormous hope today that everything has changed as of today. I feel foolishly like when I walk outside, that the ground we walk on will somehow feel different-that the air will have a new texture...I know that all bad things are still bad, but the sky seems bigger.
...And as his parent, and as an educator, I am so unbearably curious about what this will mean for him, or for any of the African American kids (or adults), especially men and teenage boys, now trying to digest what just happened.. I suspect it will take a lot of time to process, much of it on levels so deep inside of him, and so invisible to the eye, that we won't ever see the tectonic shifts happening....
Patience, patience, I have to tell myself....but...as for the rest of us, well, hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!we did it!
yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!
Leonore.
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