Barack Obama speaks volumes across barriers yet breached before his page was added to the annals of our "Great American Story". With a vision reminiscent of the ideologies and standards set by the Lincolns, Kennedys and Reagan’s of generations past. From a personal perspective, Barack Obama is more than our first African American President with a political consciousness unheard of before his time.
Before I continue, allow me to affirm that I too am of multiple nationalities. My grandfather was a half-Irish, half-Native American private in the United States Army. My grandmother was the daughter of German civil servants who were also instrumental figures in the German Resistance against Adolf Hitler during the Second World War. My biological father (who I have never met) is of African American descent.
I was born and raised in Central Arkansas, during a period that was and has since existed much as it did in generations prior to my own. I was raised in an all white family that was largely consumed by the same contempt that has blemished the character of the south since the days of slavery. Needless to say, culture was something I had to acquire alone and throughout most of my childhood by myself. I did so by burying myself in my studies throughout grade school. However, growing up among a social class that discouraged the notion of my success because of the color of my skin eventually influenced me to yield my own dreams and aspirations only to allow myself to be subjected to the repressiveness that was evidentiary of my inability to rise above the sociological constraints I felt were keeping me from realizing my own potential. So, I did what many do when they come under such circumstances and entered the work force almost immediately upon graduation. It would take me nearly ten years, two wives and four children before I would realize my ability to achieve that potential when I finally began my college education.
As the election neared its end, many members of my family began to realize Barack Obama embodied the fundamental change that America so desperately required. As Obama was announced the President-Elect, my grandmother was said to have been extremely disgusted by the elections outcome. If finally came to light that race was the one and only factor involved in her bitterness.
What would it have meant to her if it were me in Barack’s position? I thought long and hard and came to the conclusion that if a woman who was subjected to the civil injustices of a tyrant of Adolf Hitler’s caliper, who lived as the Jewish during the Holocaust, who suffered the persecution of a country that promised her so much for so many years and yet failed to deliver on so many occasions, who was denied citizenship because of social prejudice could still judge another man’s character based upon his racial ethnicity and not his ethics, his deeds, his vision, and his overall contributions to humanity, we have still yet a way to go before anything truly changes.
As our soon to be President so eloquently stated in his victory speech, “This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.” Nonetheless, the day Barack Obama became President-Elect not only marks the day of our nation’s first black man to become Commander-in-Chief; it marks the day that I finally became an African-"American". For that I am deeply humbled and forever indebted.
