Dear Malcolm,
We Did IT ! We elected an African-American president in the true sense of the word, and more than that we elected Barack Obama a man of almost unspeakable integrity and compassion with a great sense of history. He was inaugurated 6 days before your real third birthday. We watched it at Mountain Valley with other Black children. I had you and Maya both on my lap. At points in the speech you applauded on cure, and at points you jumped up and a\down hands in the air chanting "Yes, we can."
I can not explain to you the shock that I feel at this whole event. I am still taking it all in. I am so happy that I can tell you now that you can be anything that you want to when you grow up, and not feel on some level that I am lying because of the plight of Black men in America. I feel that on the day that man took office that for the first time I became an American. Even though I was born on this soil. Even though my fathers' ancestors built this country as slaves. Even though my mother's ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower, and later became syffragists, I never felt that I was an American. I always felt too alien to have that title apply to me. I seemed to belong to all the wrong groups, or at least not to belong to write ones. Now, seeing a Beatuiful Black Man and Black Family stepping into the doors of the white house built by slaves like our ancestors as President and First Lady, and hearing him recognize people of all faiths but especially the Muslim community, recognizing people of all kinds, queer, straight, poor, rich, Black, white, and every hue in between, I feel healed but shocked.
What we have overcome my child! How far we have yet to go, but how much we have overcome! Someday you will learn how your grandmother was beaten fighting for injustice. Someday you will know what your parents went through just trying to be who we are, and how hard it is even to figure out how to love each other because of all the oppresions we must live through.
This world that we live in now is crazier even than the one I inherited from my parents. I thought that there was no way that you would live in a better place than me. I thought surely you would still face racial profiling as well as global warming, terrorism, and endless war, but now something is better than it ever has been. Some healing has happened, and if nothing else we have managed to give you a gift, a better more hopeful world than I ever imagined.
I am finally starting see what Dr. King must have felt like living in the times he did. I now see that we also live in great and historic times. I am still trying to process what I can do to heal from the past and rise to the call that the present is putting forth. I need a moment to get some rest, catch my breath, to figure out what direction God wants me to go, but I am so happy that you my beautiful milk chocolate sweet, sweet son can grow up in a world in which your humanity will be more recognized and your potential more acknowledged than was ever possible before.
Please take a moment to look at these photos. How beautiful are the Obamas? Do you see President Obama laying his hand on the same bible that Abraham Lincoln used. History has a way of coming back in cycles. There have been so many invocations of Dr.King that I think that at times I have felt him sitting next to me. In my mind, Ihave seen him embrace President Obama with pride and then whisper "Mr. President, there are a few things I would like to discuss with you tomorrow." Let us believe that Dr.King is doing the work of saints and ancestors and guiding our president still.
Thank you America for being able to take a risk, and for being willing to finally look at the racism within us and say "Yes, We can" anyway.
Malcolm, I can not wait to see what you will do in this world.
