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While your children might not see black people as beneath them, they certainly are aware of and to some extent haven't been taught more than the stereotypes surrounding them (black men are either hip hop artists or athletes). Thank goodness Barack Obama has thrown a new image into the mix. Having said that, it is somewhat reminiscent of the first paragraph in W.E.D DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk. Isn't it great how liberal and progressive white people can claim to be since they are voting for a black man? Yet and still our text books continue to be euro-centric and most children's knowlede of black people does not extend past Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, Tupak, Oprah, and Micheal Jordan. I wonder if whites would be as supportive had there been a more worthy white male candidate as opposed to a female. Or if Obama's mother wasn't white?

I spent my "formative" adult years in Washington DC, a city filled with intelligent middle and upper class African Americans, a population that many whites either aren't aware of or haven't been exposed to on a large scale. As a young black woman, despite being well aware of the talent, intelligence and integrity within the black community (I graduated from Howard University) I still did not think I would have a chance to vote for a black man in my lifetime. I am thrilled because he was reared in the post civil rights era and fully understand the mostly subtle direction systematic racism and prejudice as gone. I fear for a more figurative assassination and hope that he can withstand the politcal pressures to change or to stray from his grassroots beginning. I have great faith in him. Obama has the potential to be a catalyst for change.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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