I didn’t vote this year. I didn’t particularly care for either candidate, and I am tired of voting against the candidate that I dislike less. I definitely didn’t want Obama to win the election, and if I had voted, I would have voted for McCain. I don’t feel that the government knows what’s best to do with our money and I believe, “that governments best which governs least.” I think that large scale redistribution of wealth is dangerous and doesn’t reward people for hard work.
All of that notwithstanding, we now have a black president. We, a nation of slavery 150 years ago, have a black president. We, a nation of Jim Crow laws and segregated schools only 50 years ago, have a black president. A nation in which, until 50 years ago, minorities were not guaranteed the right to vote now has a black president.
I am not a historian, but I have a hard time believing that any society in the history of mankind has progressed so far, so quickly. That a demographic of a society that was officially oppressed by its government has, in 50 years, produced the leader of that nation without a civil war, coup or military uprising in that time period has to be unprecedented. It is a testament to those who worked so hard and sacrificed so much years before I was born to set the ground work for something like this to happen, but it is also a testament to our nation, for making right what was so wrong.
In the scope of someone’s lifetime, 50 years certainly is not a short span of time, let alone 150 years. In the scope of history, it is less than the blink of an eye. I am not naive enough to think that we don’t need to continue to progress. I am not naive enough to think that there are people in our country that resent the idea of a black president. But those people have been proven to now be the true minority.
To those of you who voted for Barack Obama, congratulations. I hope you were right to do so.
More importantly, congratulations to the United States of America, for coming this far.