37) [Andrew Young] What does Obama's election mean to you?

I was just astounded by the effect the election has had on me.

Part of it, I think, is the end of embarrassment about being American. The last eight years have been just dreadful. Anyway you slice it, starting a war justified with lies that resulted in 600,000 people killed is worse than 9/11. Maybe it's not wise to say it, but the world would have been better off with 3,000 more dead Americans than hundreds of thousands of dead people. Not that we deserved 9/11--but the people of Iraq didn't deserve that war either.

But I think what has happened is that I've gotten healing about race relations, something I've been pained about all my life. I was raised a Virginian. Maybe it's like being a Texan, but when you're raised in Richmond, your heroes are Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Mason, James Madison and George Washington. I was really raised to worship those men. I went to their homes when I was a boy, visited the great sites (like the church where PH gave the "give me liberty or give me death" speech, etc. I also went to school in Colonial Williamsburg.

And of course, living in the South, I got a big dose of the Civil War as well. I took away a veneration for Lee but I also took away a sense of the violence of it, too. There's some old Clint Eastwood movie where he gets his leg amputated with a hack saw. I dunno. I've always been fixated on the violence part of it.

I know that race has been the big scar on our history. If you read history, you know the founding fathers were tormented by race as well but they just couldn't bring themselves to do the right thing.

I also had a lot of personal experience with race relations in the South. I remember as a boy working on my grandmother's farm, side by side with black kids. There were also hired men that worked on the farm. My grandmother had a good relationship with them, but there was always the barrier of race. We'd all sit down to eat a lunch during a day working on the farm, but the black men couldn't eat in the house. They ate out in the yard. My grandmother would say they smelled. But heck, even as a kid I knew they didn't have running water in their homes.

And I remember going into a department store in Richmond that had two identical water fountains. The days of "black only" and "white only" signs were gone. But even as a kid, I knew what the fountains were for.

And I remember when Richmond's schools were integrated in the 70s. My parents took me to look at private schools. I guess some of it was that they didn't want me to ride the bus 45 minutes each way to school. But race had to play a role.

I'm sure it all affected me in a 1,000 ways I couldn't even say. But it all came pouring out watching Obama's victory election night. I was listening on NPR, and my reaction was "thank god--he's won!". I went to bed very satisfied.

But it was only in watching the television coverage days later (that I had dvr-ed) that the tears just flowed uncontrollably. The look of joy on people's faces touched me beyond words. If you're 50+ and black and grew up during the civil rights era, I just don't know how could even fathom this having happened. I know Jess Jackson has issues, but the look on his face was truly touching. Andy Young can say some nutty things, but I'd love to hear what he thinks.

I think the thing that has always made me the angriest is when conservatives tell any shit-on group that they should "get over it". No, black people really don't need to get over it. The horror of racism is not ancient history. We've all seen it and lived it. "Getting over it" would be just putting a bandage on an infected wound.

I' m well aware that if the world were not racist (e.g., black kids had access to decent schools), I might not have gotten into William and Mary. If W&M were 20% or black, it seems unlikely I would have made it. And that would have set in motion the loss of a lot of other opportunities.

What I pray has happened is that we have all been cleansed--that festering wound just got a good cleansing. Maybe we can all start to heal now.


---- a final note ----
If you think this is a big deal for America, I think what it will do for the world is even bigger.
When has any industrial power had a black leader of any sort? Darned if I can think of one.
I guess you could count Nelson Mandela, but that's not European or North American.

When the world thinks black leader, they think Idi Amin or Congo's Nkunda. when I was a kid, I used to worry about people going to hell. Heck, now I just worry that the place won't be large enough to hold their ilk.