Welcome to a new era

On the first day of the black presidency, I feel like I need to write about something of substance. It’s been an interesting experience to say the least. African Americans are such a different group than other Blacks, I would soon learn. Our journey here was one of bondage. That legacy, I hadn’t fully realized until lately, has been instilled in us since birth. We grow up with this automatic acceptance that the white man has precedence over our lives, that there are certain places in our own country that we are not welcome to even dream of visiting. This would come about in everyday activities, conversations, actions. So insipid in its limiting power. And then there is today. The day we swore in an African American president of the United States. There is no longer any position, elected or private that is off limits to us. An insulting statement that a former co-worker may have said to you in passing, you won’t let slide today, because somewhere, somehow, we’ve been renewed.

See Black people from Black countries have already had Blacks in power. Over an interesting conversation, I’ve compared the experiences. It’s nothing new to them. But even to them, a Black man, with absolute power over an overwhelmingly white country. That’s legendary. I don’t really know how to explain what I feel today. Is it just going to be a fleeting sense of hope? I can feel that we’re on the brink of great change, real change. Not the change of policy, laws, economics. Those are all a bit too tangible. I feel a huge sense in the shift of power and culture in America. The people want to openly heal from their scars and right their wrongs. We have come together and forced a very staid, very methodical system into submission. America wants to deal with race. America wants to deal with class. America wants to deal with a new era of communication, art and style. We want to dissolve our overseas stereotypes. We want to resolve our differences amongst ourselves.

America wants to be proud again.

Maybe this is all coming from a place of vapid self delusion. But we’re sick of being scared. Sick of being blatantly lied to. Sick of sending our peers, sons, daughters, and friends off to kill someone else’s son, daughter or friend. Sick of watching them come back injured, or not come back at all. And completely sick of watching this happen, just to fill the pocket of a government subcontractor.

America is the story of the underdog reigning supreme. From the defeat of the British, to the free thinking victory of the North. We defeated the Great Depression, and warmed the Cold War. We come back from hardship, and we grow stronger. We are American. It’s what we do. So how appropriate that today we elect a person from the most disenfranchised population of ours to be president. A man to represent us with international roots and the former face of a slave. There is no greater underdog story, than that of the Black man who would be president of the United States.