I never thought my first diary would be political and not economic. Actually, I never thought I would write a diary on DK, eventhough I have lurked here since Kos was the Little Orange Imp.
I am African American, a father, a husband, a hedge fund manager turned stay at home dad last summer. At 40, I finally have figured out what is more important than squeezing a couple of percentage points out of someone else's misery.
As the Democratic primary wends its way to the increasingly inevitable Obama victory, my thoughts have strayed from Clinton's self-immolating behaviour (which is best ignored at this point; the math doesn't lie) to what an Obama victory would mean. We all know the Barack Hussein Obama story: Harvard to community activist to the state legislature, and thanks in part to Jack Ryan being a freak, junior Senator from Illinois. His biography is amazing, and each day, breaks new ground in American history. But these are not my reasons for voting for him. Rather, my family's history and my family's future are why I am willing to, to borrow a John McCain saying, follow him to the gates of Hell.
My dad was from North Carolina, and my mom South Carolina. Our family history in America dates back to the 1760s. We have been slaves, we bought our way out of slavery, fought and clawed our way to be landowners, ministers, doctors, lawyers, and bankers. We have fought in every major conflict this nation has entered or has had thrust upon it, from 1776 to 2008. Each generation stands on the shoulders of the previous, and most of us are intensely aware of it. We are, in many respects, the face of America.
I knew my dad had gone to divinity school before going to med school, but I did not know he had gone from church to church in Western North Carolina in 1947 to preach the need for African Americans to register to vote. His voter registration actions led to the KKK or some Klan-esque group chasing them out of North Carolina, my mother and father ending up in DC, where he went to med school and my mom had my oldest sister.
My family later moved to Baltimore, integrating a neighborhood. Death threats and rumors of firebombings ensued. My uncles and older cousins, either WWII or Korean vets came up and apparently turned my house into an armed camp, my sister and my cousin still recall how they would go to and from school in a convoy.
When I was maybe 10 or so, my family had gone to South Carolina to visit my mother's side of the family and to look at some land my dad and her bought. We went for a walk through this little town, my mother pointing out where Mrs. So and So lived, and where she used to play, until we reached the parcel they had bought. It was a field with a tree in it, nothing special, except for my brother and I to climb. She stopped us, and proceeded to tell us the story of that tree, the Lynching Tree. She told us how her great uncle had swung from the branches before she was born, how whites would threaten to "string up uppity N****rs" and how absolutely terrified she was as a little girl when my grandmother explained the rules of Southern life. As long as I live, I will never forget how my mother and aunts cried like babies as my dad and uncles and cousins cut that hated tree down.
My daughter will be three this year. She will never know those dark days of scraping to buy an inalienable right, of being strange fruit, of long nights holding a loaded rifle, of any of those things. But, I will tell her, and I will take her down to the weathered stump of the Lynching Tree and run her little hand over it and gently tell her of the blood, sweat and tears that has made her who she is and will inform what she will become.
And then I will point to President Obama, and tell her how in one speech, not more than 5,000 words, he spoke to the fears and divisions that have tormented this country for 221 years. I will speak to the hope, savage, unbridled hope, that we, the people, can be more than our history, that we can embrace our American birthright. The audacity of hope, indeed.
That is why I will vote, donate, volunteer, whatever, to see Obama into the White House. The river of my ancestors demands it, my future generations demand it.
UPDATE
I want to thank everyone who took the time to read this diary, I am shocked by the response. It was not easy to write, and I surprised myself by posting it. Again, thanks for reading, and I hope to be able to write like this again.