Well Written. Thanks for an important perspective.

Rec'd.

Truly moving, Jade.

Too often we talk about the firsts - first woman, first black man, first hispanic, as political milestones, but we forget about the people they impact.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for allowing us to share this intensely personal moment. Sometimes I am glad that my parents and grandparents missed the heartache of one thing or another. But tonight I am sad that not one of them lived to see this: a triumph of Obama's do-the-right-thing-even-when-it's-hard ethics they believed in and lived by. My father used to say that "straightshooters always win," even when his own life experience ultimately belied that. How delighted he would be to see his belief justified.
P.S. A mother of 79 who watches Keith is a remarkable woman. Thank you for so obviously making her life better, by being there.

O thanks for sharing that. It's so very wonderful to read.

Yes we can! Finally.

She's probably been waiting to see a woman President, but was too senile to remember.

Beautiful post Jade. Please check this out. It's much the same story told from the other side of the divide that we hope will finally be bridged

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/14/144654/918/838/371386

Jade, I know just how you feel. Well said.

Great post - thanks.

That was a three hankie post!

And, Jade, not just "running" for president.
This November should be historic.

Not to play Otto.

It's been only 36 years since George Wallace was splitting the ticket, appealing to the intolerant racist vote, and took a bullet - one that would change the election and one that would change his life - having his paralyzed ass wiped by a black woman who can keep a smile on her face can bring a bit of humility to the soul. And he did in fact change, quite a bit. He was a much better man crippled than when he stood in the door of that college and said only whites will pass. He was a much better man having made that humiliating journey from arrogant self-righteousness to complete dependence.

There's a city in northern Alabama called Huntsville. Many people don't know about it, because Selma and Birmingham got all the attention (MLK made a conscious decision to protest where they'd send out the dogs - no use spending a day in the sun for no story). But in 1963, 4 black students were kept from entering elementary schools in Huntsville, and then the federal government stepped in and they got to stay. And most people from Huntsville have no idea this happened, right there, in its schools. Huntsville is a weird town. It had a missile range there, and somewhere in the 1950's the government decided to locate the German V-2 scientists and the budding space program development there, so a sleepy town of 17,000 mushroomed into 140,000 overnight, many transplanted northerners, building the rockets for the NASA with the rumble of booster tests shaking the city. But still, black kids couldn't go to a decent elementary school. During the 1970's, Huntsville turned into a mini-technology boom that brought expansion and continued to change the face of the city, so that these days you see Indians and Vietnamese and Chinese and blacks and whites on the high-tech campuses, and hear much more than just the staccato of German voices. The surrounding redneck and poor black scrabble towns have steadily become suburbs as roads cut through the hills to produce Greater Huntsville, which is not quite the same thing as a northeast metropolis, but is still quite the change.

So in the 45 years since those little kids were told they couldn't enter the school, in the 36 years since Governor Wallace was shot, things have changed quite a bit in Alabama. Not perfect, but quite a move from there to here.

I appreciate the expression of identity politics in this thread. I think it's the most normal thing in the world, and something to be happy about. I think it's unusual to deny identity politics, as if it's bad to be yourself, bad to work for improvements for those closest to you, whether family, community, profession or other affiliation.

50 years ago, most black people in Alabama were resigned to a poor second-class existence. Now they can look at a black man, one of their own, with the real chance to be president, as symbolizing this new age where they can be anything they want to be. And it's refreshing for any minority - because once that color divide is opened up, there's not much essential difference in whether the person is brown or yellow or red. We all know it's been a white society since conception with horrible periods of racial intolerance to blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, Chinese and Japanese to prove it. But even though there are problems of inequality that will likely always remain, you are now on a basic intrinsic level accepted and equal.

But I would ask that while you're enjoying your time in the sun, that you look across at the others who've been moving while you've been moving, whether it's those 4 Jewish boys killed protesting 45 years ago or the proud white southerners who've learned to adapt their concept of pride or those engineers who work every day in this melting pot and their kids who go to the new schools or the people who gladly move into mixed neighborhoods or those white voters who stepped into a voting booth and chose either of the candidates without worrying about what color they were.

Because sometimes I get the feeling that people think of this as a zero sum game - for one group to get ahead, another has to get behind. But we know from economics this isn't true - everyone's pay can rise even if some pay rises faster. We know from society this isn't true - there's no happiness debit if a second group finds life easier and less stressful. But for 50 years people have been looking at Alabama whites as a bunch of backwards racists - you'd be hard pressed to find a movie about the south that doesn't show some stereotyped symbol of racial hatred or a quaint backwards religious family clutching the Bible as they say grace. And it grates, just like all the in-breeding jokes about the Appalachians. One-third of the white Democratic voters chose Obama, and certainly a good portion of the 2/3 who chose Clinton did so for good reasons that didn't include race.

So perhaps we can take a breather from the stereotypes about the South, to admit that we've all come a long way in these years, that the intolerance of 50 years ago no longer exists in that entrenched fashion even if we have loads of room for improvement, that all Americans of whatever color are working together these days to lend a helping hand, and that the days when kids were locked out of schools are gone and have been replaced with a process where most can find a hand up no matter how poor they are if they're willing to work hard. Because we've all worked hard these last 50 years to bring this chapter to a close - through our votes, our attitudes, our tax dollars and donations, and in a hundred other ways that make a difference. And the curious thing about this is that lots of whites worked towards this fairer society not because they had anything to gain personally, in many ways quite the opposite, but simply because it was the right thing to do. And it's not just about a single candidate - it's about where you can live, work, study, relax. It's about opportunity in America, and that's now open for all.