The fight for the Democratic nomination is over, and we are on to speculation about Vice Presidential choices and general election tactics. As I watched Senator Obama's speech last night, though, it occurred to me that as a party and a nation, we are missing an opportunity for celebration. At the start of this race, we saw a flood of contenders. After all the primaries and caucuses, the top two finishers were an African-American and a woman.
For many of this nation's youngest voters, this might not seem like a "stop-the-presses" historic moment. Interesting, maybe, but not a reason to stop and reflect. But it is such a moment for me.
I was born in 1960. I watched "race riots", state funerals, and bloody war on the television news, but unlike most of my generation of Americans, I grew up on military bases. The military was one of the few integrated American institutions at that time. There may not have been equality of opportunity, but there was integration. We lived on streets with people of all races and backgrounds. We played together and went to school together, and every one of us was influenced by that in ways we couldn't appreciate until later. In North Carolina, where we were, all one had to do to get some exposure to racism and segregation was leave the base and drive through the surrounding community, which we occasionally did. We lived off the base for a while, too. The neighborhoods and schools there were definitely not integrated, despite any laws or court rulings.
Support for military families whose husbands and fathers were in Vietnam was almost non-existent, then. A popular saying in the military was "if we'd wanted you to have a wife, we'd have issued you one." My mother, my siblings and I suffered from that lack of concern. Finally, realizing she didn't have to take it anymore, my mother quietly claimed what was hers. She refused to be abused, she went back to school, and she became an equal partner in her marriage and salvaged a family. The TV News was showing women burning their bras, but my mother was doing just as much for "women's liberation", with no fanfare.
I'm proud to be a child of the 'sixties, but I was too young to truly appreciate what was happening. I realized it later, just as the optimism and hope were starting to transition to resignation and greed. If you had asked me twenty years ago when we would have an African-American candidate for President, or a real chance of nominating a woman, I would have said "I don't know. Maybe when I'm a grandfather, if we're lucky." Well, I have kids, but I'm not a grandfather, yet!
Yesterday was historic. I took some time to appreciate it, to think about my mother and my old schoolmates and neighbors. I hope others found last night satisfying beyond one election cycle, too. Congratulations to Senators Obama and Clinton.