For all intents and purposes, the primary season (an unprecedentedly long and arduous endurance contest it was, particularly on the Democratic side) is now over, and the general election campaign has commenced.
Before the nation plunges into the partisan atmosphere inevitably generated by a general presidential campaign, Americans need to pause, to reflect, and to savor the moment.
The United States of America, who’s Supreme Court declared slaves to be property, not humans, 151 years ago, in the infamous Dred Scott decision, has experienced one of its two major parties nominating a presidential candidate who is of mixed African and Caucasian ethnic heritage.
If Senator Obama were to be elected, he would be serving as president when the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the Civil War rolls around in 2011, and if re-elected, when the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation occurs in 2013.
I am sure that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is smiling at this historic moment in his country’s history. Surely, Senator Obama’s nomination as the presidential standard bearer for one of the nation’s two major parties is one of the things Dr. King had in mind when he dreamed of an America in which people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I am not naïve enough to believe that racism is no longer part of our society. However, I do believe that Senator Obama’s nomination demonstrates that it is no longer metastasizing, and that the Civil Rights Movement has provided chemotherapy and radiation treatments which have shrunk this deadly cancer in American society to a considerable degree.
Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, or whether you plan to vote for Senator Obama or not, as Americans, we should all give our country at least two cheers for continuing the march toward the fulfillment of the promise of our founding document—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . . .”