This is indeed an historic day for the US. And although he is not the candidate for whom I voted, I think he is sincere in wanting America to be better. I can support an honest man, which I believe Barack Obama to be.
When I was in high school in Louisiana, the state desegregated the public schools in the parish. (That will give you an idea of how old I am!) I had been raised mostly in Ohio, and my father's work in the Air force brought us in contact with other ethnic groups all the time, so it was no big deal to me to let the black kids come to class with us.
During a school assembly where the teachers and administrators were doing their best to make sure we didn't have daily riots, I said to myself (but aloud), "I don't see what the big deal is. What's wrong with letting everybody go to the same school?"
An upperclassman - whose build suggested that he carried farm tractors around the homestead for fun - heard me and said to me, "You sound like a n--lover. You wanna get whupped?" or words to that effect. Since me fighting this guy would have been tantamount to suicide, I kept silent. But it brought home to me the point that people learn to hate others without learning anything about those 'others.'
The first time I rode down the main road in that small city, we stopped at a traffic light and I gawked at all the different things around me and marveled at how different Louisiana was from Ohio. And I saw a dry cleaner's with the sign above it saying "Whites only." I asked my mother why the store didn't dry clean yellow or red clothes and she thought I was kidding.
I wasn't. She had to explain to me that it meant that black people couldn't go in there. It made me angry to know that these dumb hicks thought so little of some of their fellow citizens.
I don't care what a person's outer shell looks like. I want to know if he or she will keep his or her word. I want to know if I can depend on that person when troubled times come. And I want to know if that person will tell the truth no matter what the personal cost.
I will judge President Obama by his actions, not his heritage. And I hope that my fellow Americans will do the same thing, whether they voted for or against his skin color or his politics.
