US Election First Reactions

Obama – The Sound of Shattering Glass

Sometimes when you put your thoughts on paper you are not sure if they are conveying what you really want to say. In this case I find myself having trouble putting it all together. Do I start with my family moving to Canada, my own experiences in school, stories of Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks? I could start with John Kennedy and my mother’s tears.

Indeed that really is where the story starts for me. I had never seen my mother cry and I really didn’t understand it then but the first time I saw it was the day John Kennedy was shot. Even then it seemed distant, and I knew nothing about geography, it just didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Frankly, I only barely know I was black and had no idea what that meant.

Over time I would come to know what being black meant. Of course back then we weren’t black yet, it was the early sixties and to many, sometimes even our teachers, we were still niggers. To the intelligencia we were Negros and to the ultra liberal we were coloured. Don’t let me five you the impression that there were a lot of we, in my case it was my mom, dad and older brother. In the entire separate school board in our town my brother and I were the first.

Being first made me truly appreciate what it is for the first person to break any barriers, although it is only now as I am older that I can really understand. And when your differences can be seen at huge distances, and when your differences have been denigrated for generations each breaking barrier is greeted with both cheers and jeers. It is the jeers that sounded so resoundingly for so many years because not matter how high we flew there were places we could not go.

And here I find myself, shocked by not knowing which should surprise me more, the fact that it is happened, the fact that it took so long or the fact that I find myself explaining to people what it means for black people. The strange looks as if to say, what do you mean prejudice, I’ve never seen it. Their surprise, almost as if to say; “Well it has never happened to me” and the clear implication that it could not be true. Of course not, you are white, how would you know what I mean by prejudice against blacks, it is not your experience. That does not make it any less real.

Still, there is a part of me that is happy to hear the very colour-blindness of the youth. Yes they should know the history, but hopefully only as history and not as their own truth.

I feel a little like a former overweight person who upon having lost the weight still has the same body image. How long before the scars can heal, will the ripple in the pond echo in our lifetimes and will we, the older generation be able to move beyond our pain and be part of the new order.