✿ Realizing A Political Dream For Presidency
Martin Luther King uttered the words:
“We will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope…”
Since slavery and shackles, African-Americans have fought their suppression as socially a stigmatized group under the stronghold of white supremacy, and the Civil Rights Movement became the basis for Black socio-political discourse that impacted generations of minorities with a unifying desirability to achieve civil justice. Empowered by their endeavors for equality, African-Americans became the defendants for minority justice and the Civil Rights Movement: the cornerstone.
The society that Martin Luther King envisioned was begot through the many sacrifices made to break down barriers that led generations of minorities to set cultural and historical precedence unrealized in the 1960’s. We want to believe in the false notion that we live in a racially inclusive and integrationist society where racial practices are basically colorless. In today’s society it’s harder to indentify social ills connected to racism, especially when most citizens won’t even acknowledge its existence.
But, the bigotry reflected in inequality that groped this democratic nation for centuries was challenged four years ago when Barack Obama ran for Presidency. With this transformation, something that was solely seen as the white man’s burden finally became every man’s burden. Obama epitomized the struggles minorities historically faced through the glass ceiling effect. Obama became an exception rather than rule in a society that is promoted as color blind, yet marginalizes certain citizens regarding education, occupation, and representation through socio-cultural stratification.
Obama became a brand of hope, demonstrated through the overwhelming obstacles that lingered from the inescapable impact of the Jim Crow Era. Obama strove to overcome the constant burden carried by communities of color post-Civil Rights. From our first to forty-second president, the folkways of the old have remained considerably intact, but with our forty-thrid president we set our sights on new forms of being hopeful, realizing that we “will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro Spiritual, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
When liberty is extended to all then democracy becomes a political dream realized.
On November 4, 2008, citizens elected their first minority President of the United States. On November 6, 2012, let’s hope citizens continue to move forward with Obama’s change.
「✿ An anthropoid that is an applied learner, not an accumulated one. ✿」
Bunny