A dream realized

Last month I was volunteering a few hours at my local NPR station for their membership fund drive. During a lull in pledge calls, two women--another volunteer and one of the staff--and I got into a discussion about why do African-Americans call themselves by that moniker. Why can't 'they' just let go of that and be called 'Black', my two companions wondered.

No other ethnic group, with the exception of Native Americans, identifies themselves as such. Perhaps we hear 'Cuban-American' or 'Euro-American' from time to time, mentioned in an article or discussion, but most of us refer to ourselves simply as 'American'. And we keep our ethnicity secondary, or at least, separate from that: Latino, Hispanic, Caucasian, Asian, etc., each of which includes a whole host of ethnic backgrounds.

I pointed out that African-Americans are the only ones who are descended from those who came to this country against their own free will, that they were Africans first and Americans only because they were brought here in chains. Native Americans are identified as such because their country, their land was taken against their will, that they were the first and only Americans until us immigrants invaded their homeland, infected them with disease and poverty, and declared them savages. These two liberal-minded women, who probably would bristle at being included in the term 'men', had never thought of that before.

On Tuesday my family and I attended the inauguration of President Barack Obama (boy, does that sound good!). The majority of people who attended were African-American. In the subway, on the streets of DC, and in the crowd that hemmed us in on all sides, we were surrounded by faces of color. I felt as though this was truly their day and I was welcomed as a guest at the celebration.

None of us can really know the experience of what it means to be oppressed unless we have experienced it ourselves. The key is to listen and listen well to people of color, to trust their experience as true, and that we all play a part in the problem and pain of racism.


P.S. Below is a map of the National Mall. My family and I were standing near 14 St. west of the Dept. of Agriculture. Security closed the Mall at 9 a.m. because the crowd was so overwhelming. We were 3o feet from the fence and had a narrow view of one of the Jumbotron screens, partially obscured by a tree. When Barack Obama took the oath of office, my oldest daughter (12) was smiling and my youngest daughter (9) was standing on her father's knees, her arms pointed to the sky in V-formation, chanting "O-ba-ma!" with the rest of the crowd. It was then that I knew it was all worth it.