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On the eve of the end of the Democratic National Convention and the acceptance speech of Barack Obama as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party it is appropriate to look around and look back at the journey that brought us to this place. Where does the country go from here?
America has changed during my 49 years in many ways. I recall the hot electronic device in my early childhood, the thing that we all wanted under the Christmas tree, a transistor radio. We were suddenly plugged in to a world outside our neighborhood. We heard things beyond our parents' control whenever we clicked that little on and off switch and the static of the AM broadcast emitted songs and DJ chatter from those tiny little speakers.
The television became a family and neighborhood intrusion at the same time. Our family didn't buy a color television until I was in the fourth grade. We were limited in our TV watching by the phrase, "Go out and play" but even back in the 60's the media through the transistor radio was beginning to reshape America. I think it was the first time that outside influence on youth was a regular event and it came in through little battery-operated radios and black and white television.
When the civil rights movement began racism was so well integrated into our society that I am confident that few people could imagine a day when it would be overcome. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we kids used racial themes in choosing sides for games, at Christmas time the nut bowl included Brazil nuts that were called n____r toes. As I said, the racism of America was integrated into everyday life even where I grew up in California.
So when the ugliness and unfairness and the anger and resistance to this accepted racist way of life began to be challenged publicly, and when the public challenges were broadcast, and the broadcasts began to reach us all. We heard the songs on the radio and we saw the violence on TV and we started to self-examine our words and our attitudes and we began a long process of change.
Political correctness is a first step toward change. To acknowledge that certain actions and attitudes are unacceptable to the public political consciousness is a first step toward inner change. It is no small matter to change a child's chant from eenie-meenie-minie-moe-catch a n____r by the toe to catch a tiger by the toe. It is not small matter to start calling Bazil Nuts, Brazil Nuts instead of some degrading racist term.
These changes were fundamental even if they were done to appear politically correct. Changes like these forever altered one brick at a time in the foundation of racism as an acceptable and cemented part of life. There were many such changes, some driven by political correctness and others by brute force of will and courage on the part of the oppressed. One brick at a time in the foundation of racism in this country was dismantled and often by the media touching the fundamental goodness of average people as the ugliness and unfairness of their racism was exposed to the light of day.
The incoming media connection to the outside world forever broke down the isolation of neighborhoods, cities, regions, and states. The constant trickle of media coverage that has turned into a deluge of information, opinion, fact and fiction and it has changed America. Unwrapping that transistor radio back in around 1965 at Christmas, I doubt that any of us around the tree that morning or gathered at the TV that evening could have predicted the changes that this new magical electronic media would produce.
Tonight Barack Obama will shatter a cornerstone in America's racist foundation. Win or lose in the election he has done what was unthinkable when I first clicked on my treasured transistor radio. He will awaken our country from its slumber in which we lolled for the past forty plus years. Tomorrow we will leave "The Dream" and we will all awaken to "The Reality" of an America where a Black man can be President and a Black woman can be First Lady. Let's face it folks, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent or a Green, this is a great day to be an American.
Our system works and the founding fathers' dream for this country as a place of liberty has surpassed their wildest dreams when they wrote:
" We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
America won't be perfect tomorrow, it will never be perfect, but it will be more perfect and more Americans will be able to say that the Blessings of Liberty are theirs too.
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