tears to remember
Judith Warner's blog entry Tears to Remember really struck a chord with me (and with 513 commenters) the other day.
I was one of those people who cried when the election was called for Obama and Biden, for intertwined reasons that took a while for me to tease apart. Warner articulated some of it here: It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it's a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama's victory and [Jesse] Jackson's tears.
This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the 'values voters' around whose sensibilities we've had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.
The election brought the return of a country we'd lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.
For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.
Yeah, that. Part of it, for me, really was a huge, cathartic release of grief...and relief. Grief for what has been willfully destroyed and what we've lost over the last 8 years (at minimum), and for my fellow citizens who live in states that voted to deny them rights. I haven't posted about Prop 8 this week, but it makes me sick and sad to know that sufficient bigotry still exists not only to deny the recognition of rights, but to actually strip them away from people. My joy is thus tempered with sorrow, and I hope that the various legal challenges against Prop 8 and other anti-GLBT propositions voted into law this week will succeed.
Still, there is relief that enough people agreed with me that it was time to retake our nation for it to actually happen, and for finally being able to see the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Not just relief...vindication. I have opposed Dubya since his first run for the presidency, and I never found reason to revise my opinion upward. For the longest time, though, I felt like Cassandra shouting down a well. Despite all the evidence of the horrors he wrought against our Constitution and citizens, not to mention the rest of the world, I despaired that so many people didn't see -- perhaps were afraid to see -- just how serious the situation really was. I had become painfully cynical and bitter. With this election, a critical mass of people have finally turned their backs on the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the GOP in its current form. Annoyingly, it looks to me as though it wasn't all the legal travesties perpetrated by the Bush Administration that finally turned the tide, but the direct, palpable hit to the nation's collective pocketbook. Too many people didn't care enough about their own rights to act sooner; it was always the economy, stupid. *sigh* But you know what? I'll take it anyway.
There was also fresh grief for my cousin Laura, who did not live to see this victory. I sat vigil over her with my family during the week of the Republican national convention, and though I and the rest of the family were outraged by the things that were said and done at the convention that week, I displaced a lot of that outrage in favor of being there for my loved ones. I know Laura would have been happy to know that the Republicans had been so soundly repudiated. I just wish she could have been here to see it for herself.
I cried, too, knowing what this victory means to my fellow citizens of color, especially for all those who have lived and fought through the civil rights era. I can only imagine their jubilation -- and again, vindication -- at finally seeing this barrier fall. My wish is for Americans of color to feel as welcome in this nation as white Americans do, and for all white Americans to finally accept them as their equals. That is part of the American promise, but one upon which our society has reneged for so, so long. As of Tuesday, I hope children of all hues now know that they could become president, and that voters of all hues know it, too.
I would feel the same to see the gender barrier fall (and the religion barrier, too), but, oddly, I actually think that Obama's election may mean more to the world at this moment than the election of Hillary Clinton might have. But I still look forward to electing a truly qualified woman as president -- something I do believe Clinton to be, for all that her campaign tactics lost her my primary vote -- and I think that will happen relatively soon. One day I know I will weep to see a woman elected president of the United States; with luck, it'll even be a woman for whom I will gladly vote (read: NOT SARAH PALIN OR SOMEONE LIKE HER). :-} Maybe I will be like that photo of the woman being comforted by her daughter, weeping for a promise fulfilled, a promise that my own child would be too young yet to comprehend fully. I hope so. May any child of mine only have to read about such things in history books and wonder what it had been like to live with discrimination and bigotry.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Call me an idealist, a cockeyed optimist, or what have you: Whatever happens next, I think that arc bent a little more toward justice on November 4, 2008.
I was one of those people who cried when the election was called for Obama and Biden, for intertwined reasons that took a while for me to tease apart. Warner articulated some of it here: It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it's a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama's victory and [Jesse] Jackson's tears.
This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the 'values voters' around whose sensibilities we've had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.
The election brought the return of a country we'd lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.
For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.
Yeah, that. Part of it, for me, really was a huge, cathartic release of grief...and relief. Grief for what has been willfully destroyed and what we've lost over the last 8 years (at minimum), and for my fellow citizens who live in states that voted to deny them rights. I haven't posted about Prop 8 this week, but it makes me sick and sad to know that sufficient bigotry still exists not only to deny the recognition of rights, but to actually strip them away from people. My joy is thus tempered with sorrow, and I hope that the various legal challenges against Prop 8 and other anti-GLBT propositions voted into law this week will succeed.
Still, there is relief that enough people agreed with me that it was time to retake our nation for it to actually happen, and for finally being able to see the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Not just relief...vindication. I have opposed Dubya since his first run for the presidency, and I never found reason to revise my opinion upward. For the longest time, though, I felt like Cassandra shouting down a well. Despite all the evidence of the horrors he wrought against our Constitution and citizens, not to mention the rest of the world, I despaired that so many people didn't see -- perhaps were afraid to see -- just how serious the situation really was. I had become painfully cynical and bitter. With this election, a critical mass of people have finally turned their backs on the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the GOP in its current form. Annoyingly, it looks to me as though it wasn't all the legal travesties perpetrated by the Bush Administration that finally turned the tide, but the direct, palpable hit to the nation's collective pocketbook. Too many people didn't care enough about their own rights to act sooner; it was always the economy, stupid. *sigh* But you know what? I'll take it anyway.
There was also fresh grief for my cousin Laura, who did not live to see this victory. I sat vigil over her with my family during the week of the Republican national convention, and though I and the rest of the family were outraged by the things that were said and done at the convention that week, I displaced a lot of that outrage in favor of being there for my loved ones. I know Laura would have been happy to know that the Republicans had been so soundly repudiated. I just wish she could have been here to see it for herself.
I cried, too, knowing what this victory means to my fellow citizens of color, especially for all those who have lived and fought through the civil rights era. I can only imagine their jubilation -- and again, vindication -- at finally seeing this barrier fall. My wish is for Americans of color to feel as welcome in this nation as white Americans do, and for all white Americans to finally accept them as their equals. That is part of the American promise, but one upon which our society has reneged for so, so long. As of Tuesday, I hope children of all hues now know that they could become president, and that voters of all hues know it, too.
I would feel the same to see the gender barrier fall (and the religion barrier, too), but, oddly, I actually think that Obama's election may mean more to the world at this moment than the election of Hillary Clinton might have. But I still look forward to electing a truly qualified woman as president -- something I do believe Clinton to be, for all that her campaign tactics lost her my primary vote -- and I think that will happen relatively soon. One day I know I will weep to see a woman elected president of the United States; with luck, it'll even be a woman for whom I will gladly vote (read: NOT SARAH PALIN OR SOMEONE LIKE HER). :-} Maybe I will be like that photo of the woman being comforted by her daughter, weeping for a promise fulfilled, a promise that my own child would be too young yet to comprehend fully. I hope so. May any child of mine only have to read about such things in history books and wonder what it had been like to live with discrimination and bigotry.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Call me an idealist, a cockeyed optimist, or what have you: Whatever happens next, I think that arc bent a little more toward justice on November 4, 2008.