The World Turned Right Side Up

When I began this blog, a bit more than a year ago, I made a vow that, come what may, the one thing I was not going to talk about was politics. There are already far too many political blogs out there. I myself am generally not horribly interested in the topic, preferring to focus my energies on smaller-scale things than who becomes president of the United States. But in the aftermath of last Tuesday's national election, I suppose I cannot help adding my two cents to the political conversation.

An African-American man has been elected president of the United States. For the past week, as I have called up family and old friends in the United States, I have repeatedly quipped that there must be pigs flying past their windows. But the more I think about that joke, the more I realize how wrong that joke is. For in fact, it does not surprise me that such a thing could happen--has now happened--in America.

In my heart, I have never believed that most white Americans are racists. Were they at one time? Definitely. But not any more. I never felt any need to examine the "Bradley effect"--the supposed propensity of white voters to tell pollsters they would vote for a black candidate, but then not do it in the actual voting booth. I had faith in the goodness of the American people, and that faith has proven justified.

Even more so, I had faith in my generation--the generation raised on Sesame Street and Bill Cosby, a generation of unparalleled ethnic and racial diversity. By all accounts, my generation voted overwhelmingly for Obama. And this does not, in fact, surprise me. We have sat side by side in college lecture halls, worked together in the same companies, and never once thought this was anything remarkable, anything other than the way things ought to be.

Maybe now we can all grow up. Maybe race finally is truly a thing of the past in America. White people in urban America can stop being afraid of people whose skin happens to be the same shade as the president-elect; black people can stop feeling as though the deck is stacked against them.

Like Michelle Obama, I am now really proud of my country; unlike her, I can only wish I were there to see firsthand where her husband will us.