Traveling out of DC on the morning after the Inauguration was actually more difficult than getting in. As we waited thirty minutes to get a free cab, I noticed this sign in the trash. Apparently even the anarchists are excited about President Obama! I had a long cab ride in traffic to BWI while poor Jared had to endure a charter bus ride from hell to get a good airfare out of Philly.
On my flight to Houston I sat next to an African American woman who let me borrow her newspaper so I could read the full text of Obama’s speech. I’d missed a lot of it during the ceremony because the sound system didn’t quite reach where we were standing. After reading it, I broke into tears, my first emotional moment of the whole trip.
I was firstly just so grateful that we had chosen a leader who is intelligent and speaks in complete, coherent sentences. Second, I share more values with the President than not—a first for me when it comes to political figures. Third, the country is facing arguably the greatest challenges we have ever confronted, but I sense more optimism and can-do-it-ness in rising to the challenge, than cynicism or apathy than ever before. And lastly, I was proud of America for doing the right thing—for electing the better man, and for overcoming racial bias to do so.
As I handed the paper back to my seat mate with tears rolling down my face I said, “I am so grateful.” She said to me, “I’m so glad to be sitting next to you, honey. God bless you.” There was so much more communicated in that moment than what we said to each other—and I’m not sure I can find the words to describe it exactly. But we found ourselves on the same side, beyond the divides that would have previously kept us from connecting. We transcended something so ubiquitous and tacit that we don’t even have a word for it. Its one of those things that only becomes noticeable when you suddenly sense its absence.
As she continued to read the paper, she showed me a story about Angola Prison where the inmates had been allowed to watch the inaugural ceremony on TV. The picture showed a man who has been in prison since 1957, doing a life sentence for two murders. She reminded me that according to the US Department of Justice, 32% of black men will enter prison during their lifetime, as opposed to seventeen percent of Hispanic males and six percent of white males. Yeah, there’s that, I thought. How are we going to change that one? But what I said out loud was, “You know, I think that is going to change too.”
What happened next during my four-hour layover in Houston reinforced that nascent hope, when I struck up a conversation with a young African American man behind the cash register at a Mexican restaurant. At first I picked up on his energy of subtle hostility, but when I made a comment about Obama’s busy first day he broke out a huge smile and started talking to me like I was one of his homies instead of some white lady buying a taco. “My man ain’t wastin’ no time,” he said. “He got up and said, ‘We gonna get down to business, we got some work to do. We gonna make some changes today.’”
It was so awesome, he and I were suddenly “us” instead of “them.” Then he said something that blew me away. He said “Today I’m an American. I ain’t African American no more. Today, I’m an American.” “Right on, my brother,” I said and gave him a high five.
I think this might be the first evidence that a tectonic shift in race relations is taking place. And what is happening is redefining what it means to be American. I think we are going to see some amazing things on a human-to-human level, as long as we stay open and reach beyond our old ethnocentric divides to connect with others. Do the experiment for yourself and see what happens when you tell an African American stranger on the street how happy you are that Barack Obama is our new President.
