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PRESIDENT OBAMA!
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Diane: [QB] I wanted to share this email message from an online friend who lives in the black ghettos of NYC. [QUOTE] What I was trying to say in my long night of emotional ups and downs was that only in the past two days did I realize exactly what it meant for Obama to win. I mean, I get it intellectually; I get it emotionally. I get it in all kinds of ways. But I only got it within the past two days what it means for every person who is NOT WHITE (Caucasian). This was especially moving to me because of where I live. I complain about, and get so frustrated about, the isses that plague the Black Community where I live and I just don't understand why there seems to be no effort to rise above the history of oppression. I mean, as an objective caucaisan, I could relate to oppression and struggle from only so many angles, and I really thought I was doing a good job of empathizing... but I wasn't. In the past couple of days with the election on the horizon, I felt something change in my community. I felt what I never felt before, which is the anchor of oppression that isn't just an artifact from the past, as I had always seen it, but a deep wounding that was handed down from generation to generation as if it was the only option for defining the Black race. But see, I knew this... but I didn't GET it. Today, as I started feeling the energy moving in more and more alive ways, I suddenly felt this implosion and I realized just how powerful it meant for us to have a Black President. And then it really REALLY hit me... I mean, if I think that's such a moving thing... my god, how were other races feeling about this. I mean, centuries of absolutely NO positive models, NO positive representation... nothing. Just the options for thugs and sidekicks and mockeries of themselves. I can relate to it to some degree as a gay man having had our sexuality and effort to love mocked and punished, but... it's not the same. So my tears tonight were all about my shame in realizing just how ignorant I have been about that reality, and about this incredibly beautiful relief that washed over me that I finally found the empathy and the utter profundity of this election. I have so much excitement for how my community might begin to change now. This anchor of historic oppression as an identity no longer has any valuable weight! It's OVER. Sure, it's not going to change over night, but the efforts to make a difference together will be heightened and the enthusiasm was palpable in my neighborhood tonight. When I walked my dog tonight, my Black community LOOKED AT ME... in my eyes, and smiled and I could tell I was being seen differently. The weight of what I represented was lifted from me, too! I feel it. And I know it might seem silly, but you have no idea how heavy that weight has been for me to live under as I recovered over the past year. To know that the division is potentially tipped in a direction away from history and color defining our possibilities and divisions... Well, I wept. Still weeping... But then, I'm a big baby, I guess. And it's NOT about Obama, neccessarily, it's about the entire symbolism and everything involved with that. Like the fact that WE did this... WE put a Black man into our White House! WE DID IT!! In every future vision of our country, science fiction has a non-White or a woman as President. We are now living in that future of possibility and everything connected to that fantasy of our future is now rooted as tangible possibilities. Star Trek... Gene Roddenberry... Here we come! [/QUOTE]Along these same lines, my roommate, who is half black and from Kansas, told me about the phone message her dad (who is white) left her. He said that he kept having to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming, because when he married her mother, interracial marriages were still illegal in 25 states. Her parents worked in the civil rights movement and used to get all kinds of death threats from both whites and blacks. It's pretty hard not to feel emotional to see how far we've come. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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