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America is getting bigger.
Our heroes are getting bigger. Lieutenant Ehren Watada. Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And, yes, Barack Obama.
People who want to keep America small—small as their sad, vengeful little deities—are still around, mad and scared and loudly asserting the empty talking points that inflated their sense of importance. But the echo chamber has been turned off and their voices are sounding shrill and tinny. They’re still trying to whip up hate and fear about Scary Brown People Who Want to Hurt Us, but the tide of demographics and social dynamics has turned and is flooding in upon them.
I was born into an America that denied people the right to vote based on the color of their skin.
I was born into an America that wouldn’t vote for a Catholic President because it would put the Pope in control.
I was born into an America that forced women into the choice of bearing unwanted babies, or risking their lives to get illegal, unsafe abortions.
I was born into an America that forcibly denied the children of First Americans their language, religion, and cultural heritage.
I was born into an America where you couldn’t join clubs or move into neighborhoods if you were Jewish.
I was born into an America that believed fighting the Red Menace justified the harassment and persecution of domestic dissenters.
I was born into an America that enforced laws preventing people with different skin colors from marrying each other.
I was born into an America that denied the protection of the First Amendment to atheists.
I was born into an America that persecuted, vilified, arrested, and jailed my fellow citizens, based solely on their sexual orientation.
I was born into an America where people were lynched.
I have spent my whole life trying to understand and overcome the biases and fears engendered by being born and raised in that America. I have tried to see past the legacy of white privilege, of middle-class entitlement, of parochialism and Babbitry. I have tried to challenge myself to leave the comfort zone of the familiar, the expected, the just-like-me, and see the possibilities in an America richer and more diverse than my grandparents could ever have imagined.
And slowly, helped by the visionaries of prior generations and the generosity and exuberance of generations after mine, I have been able to glimpse those possibilities.
I saw black and white men and women march together and go to jail together and get murdered and beaten and vilely slandered to fulfill a century-old promise. And I saw the magnitude of heroism and the depth of spiritual transformation released as that struggle painfully broke down barrier after barrier, throughout my life.
I saw refugees from Vietnam move into my white-bread middle-American town and watched their struggle to win economic and social and political opportunity. And I saw the beauty and courage and determination that won them a place in the social fabric of their adopted home.
I saw the harrowing pain of gay friends and family members claiming their identity in the face of rejection and ostracism by their own kinfolk, friends, and neighbors. And I saw the fountain of joy and creativity and love created as communities accepted and embraced their difference.
I lived and worked in cities where I saw young people of all skin colors and religious faiths and ethnic backgrounds going to school together and dating and working and playing together without a thought for things that would have given me doubt and fear at their age.
I live now in a place of incomparable cultural riches, where multiple strands of tradition and belief are cherished and woven together to make a vibrant and amazing strength. At long last, I think I’ve finally banished the last of the ghosts from my childhood.
I can no longer fear differences among people. I am too firmly convinced that only those differences—the embrace of them, the strength they lend, the perspective they allow—can ensure our survival in a world so damaged by greed and indifference to others’ suffering.
And for the last thirty years, I’ve been in a tumult of frustration and sorrow and regret, seeing opportunities lost, chances untaken, gifts rejected, and possibilities unexplored. For all the wonderful changes I’ve seen in my life, I’ve feared that the greatest challenges of our future might be insurmountable. On some level, the America I was born into remained with me. I couldn’t entirely banish doubt, especially in view of the last eight years’ terrible resurgence of fear and hate.
I watched the triumph of greed, fueled by the clamor to shrink my country back into a mold as small or smaller than the America I was born into. I saw fear infect my fellow citizens, fear whipped up and exploited by powerful and opportunistic leaders. I saw that fear used to diminish America, to close off avenues of possibility and crush growth.
And now that dark night of the soul is coming to an end.
I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be a black person of my age, or my parents’ age, and to able to cast a vote for Barack Obama. I only know what it feels like for me. The wonder and the fierce joy. The awe at being here, now, in this moment of history. Of being able to stand between yesterday’s America and tomorrow’s, and say “This is the moment.”
Oh, it’s not all going to be a bed of roses. There will be no end of new problems and challenges, and for all his iconic greatness Obama remains human and like all of us, he has a generous proportion of clay below the ankles.
But it will never be the same again.
I lived to see it.
gratefully,
Bright
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