“…a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served in a local restaurant, now stands before you to take a sacred oath.”
Consider that. Today, my 5 year old daughter came home from kindergarten and told us that as they watched the inauguration in the cafeteria, a teacher told them the story of “the lady who wouldn’t get off the bus, so they took her to jail.”
I grew up in Tennessee and Alabama, and racial slurs were part of the family vernacular. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I became best friends with Rashaad, a black guy at my junior high school. I spent countless hours with Rashaad and his family. Like a lot of suburban white boys, for a while I believed I was black, or became so as much as my hairstyle, clothes, music, and language would allow.
I understand now that there was nothing unusual about my white appropriation of black culture, but I’m grateful that my southern eyes were opened through Rashaad. As an English Literature major in college, I poured over African American literature; some of my most formative reading experiences were with Frederick Douglass, James Agee, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Malcolm X, and Toni Morrison. I took their stories as a searing and true lesson of a world I knew not, and was grateful for the education.
All this came to mind as I watched this morning. I shivered and teared up when President Obama observed that he was taking an oath in a town that, just 6 decades ago, had restaurants that would not give his father service. I have a teensy weensy grasp of the African American experience, but what I have I feel deeply, and because of it, I couldn’t be prouder of my country today.
posted January 21, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I agree it was a great line. But I think the act of the inauguration itself was the best expression of this (the race barrier being forever broken).
The best line of the speech, however, for my money anyway, was this simply fantastic gem:
“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”
It screams so much so elegantly and so succinctly.
If, like me, you believe the greatest failing (indeed, the most clear *moral* failing, no less) of the Bush administration was that he (or they) apparently believed we did have to sacrifice our ideals in order to secure our safety (Gitmo, torture, et al.),
then it is quite powerful to hear, directly from the new president himself, right from the start, that this is a false dichotomy and we vehemently reject it. That we will restore our dignity and respect as a nation that takes the moral high ground or, at least tries to, in all our actions — well… *sigh* thank God we have a leader who will strive to do that; who UNDERSTANDS that. That we as a nation will defeat our enemies and the real evil that exists in this world, but not at the cost of our own soul… that’s what I was longing to hear, and I heard it.
That is fantastic.
That moved me to tears.
It was a wonderful speech, and wonderful moment. I suppose we needn’t quibble over what the best line was. But that one has my money.