Why We Cried
Article Tools
-
3
Liked it 
Subscribe to RSS
Why those over fifty find the election of Barack Obama miraculous.
Forgive those over fifty who can not believe Barack Obama is President of the United States.
Understand those who cry unashamedly in inexpressible confused joy.
For you do not know the road they travelled.
You do not understand why the Tuskehegee Airmen marched alone, you do not know why simply refusing to get up and give a white person her seat made Rosa Parks a hero.
You do not know why Goodman, Chaney and Brown died in Mississippi.
You have never seen the signs “Coloured” “White” over water fountains or bathrooms, or know that the Mason Dixon line was not imaginary.
You can not comprehend how children could be declared ‘officially dead’ to their families because they married a person of another race; and that the amazing thing is not that Barack Obama is the child of a white American mother and a Black African father, but that HER parents did not reject him.
You do not begin to know where America was when John Kennedy took the Oath of Office nor how far it has travelled.
You do not know that the flag, those Stars and Stripes is viewed akin to a Swastika in other parts of the world.
You don’t know how many nations America invaded pretending to ‘liberate’; you may only know of Iraq,but Iraq is the most recent in a continuous state of war America has waged with the rest of the world; whether Panama or Somalia or Morocco or Grenada, or how very close nuclear holocaust the world has been.
You don’t know how many citizens were lynched, or otherwise murdered, locked up, beaten because they dared to protest a law, a war, a policy, or even attempting to gain their rights.
You don’t know that fifty years ago Joe Biden and Barack Obama could not sit together at a lunch counter in that very Washington D.C.
You don’t know how many left America when it was clear that the ‘Dream’ was only that.
You don’t know how eight black students died at Jackson State, nor about the four who were murdered by the National Guard at Kent State.
You may have a feeling that Bush ‘won’ his two elections by fraud, but no one cared enough to prove it, because that was the American Way.
And beyond all expectation, as great a miracle as parting the Red Sea, Barack Obama became the Forty Fourth President of the United States.
So understand that those above fifty never expected to live to see the day when a man like Barack Obama would be the President.
And when they speak of him as if they’ve seen the Epiphany, understand, that for those, over fifty, it is.
11 Comments
I’m 20. I may not of lived it but I do understand, that’s why I cried to.
I find it hard to believe (and frightening) that anybody would not understand the gravity of Obama’s achievement. Are people really that forgetful? Even as a young white Canadian i cannot help but be profoundly moved.
I am way above 50 and I was just as proud to see this man achieve the Presidential post as anyone. And yes I cried because it took so much suffering in the past and so much time for to achieve this goal. I am very proud that he was elected and am proud that I a white person was alive to witness it.
Paul and Nemesis, you can not truly grasp what Yaffel lived through.
Tho’ you may be students of history,the kind of racism that existed
in America was quite extraordinary.
I do understand all these things. I live in the south and I have seen and lived through it all. I am also white and over 50. I voted for Obama and expected he would win. When I was young life was hard for a black person but I have not personally seen any discrimination in years. I know it still exists in some areas but I do not see it.One of my nephews is married to an African American woman and I have a niece married to an African American man. I also have cousins married to African Americans.I believe we get along very well racially from what I see and experience.
I want to share something else with you that you might be interested in. When the schools were desegragated a black friend of my sons was at our house the day before the black children were to start school with the white children. Both boys were worried because there had been trouble when some other schools had been desegrated. I told them if there was trouble to call me and I would come get them. But they came home happy that evening. It had gone off without a hitch.And there was never any trouble.I think our little town was ready for change.
You were lucky, I have seen things in America….
I am 41 years old and I cried. I can remember my mother, now deceased, telling me stories about how when she was a young girl growing up in the South, blacks could not even walk on the sidewalk with whites; and about how they could not try on clothes and shoes in department stores. I wish that she could have lived to see the election of this black man.
Did you hear Colin Powell speak the other night?
We should all stand taller and hold our heads a little higher,live in this moment, for something like this I truly believe won’t happen again, racism still exist!
racism has lost a great deal of ground. No one can claim that white McCain was
’superior’ to Barack Obama. No one can claim that Barack can’t manage the job. The idea of inferiority has been obliterated.