According to Reuters, Hillary Clinton is going to appear with and endorse Barak Obama for President of the United States on Friday, after an apparently very intense and hastily called conference call between Senator Clinton and eight senators. It looks like even Democrats can get balls if you push them far enough, and she did.
Now that Hillary has finally been set aside, as she should have been long ago, we should cogitate on the significance of what has happened. For the first time in American history (and that includes both the Northern and Southern varieties), less than 150 years after slavery ended here, less than 50 years since the civil rights act, a black man is a major party candidate for president. This is a rare gem these days for America in the eyes of the world. No longer can our talk of the freedom of movement in this country: politically, economically, socially, be ignored as just so much talk. Now we've put our votes where our mouths were, at least 40% or so of us, and nominated a black man for president.
This puts us ahead of many curves. Barak Obama shows, nay, proves, that behavior matters more than race in America. That's certainly not to say we are finished repairing race relations in America. We still have much work to do. But this is certainly a huge landmark of progress. Regardless of what one thinks of Barak Obama as a president, we can all celebrate this. It certainly has not always been true here, and it remains untrue in many places around the world. In that we can take pride.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
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