This Is My Country

I don't know when the snow began, but when I peeked out of my bedroom window around 7:00 a.m. it was snowing. I pulled up the covers and went back to sleep. I hadn't planned to go in to the office today but I took the snow as a sign that perhaps a higher power decided that we should all slow down and bear witness to the rebirth of hope.

Bear with me as my thoughts are moving too rapidly for me to easily sort them out; I've been feeling somewhat hyper for the last few days. I've been thinking a lot about my childhood, the birth of my great nephew three weeks ago, mama's death, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Sometime in the early 1980s, Whoopi Goldberg created a one-woman show called, The Spook Show . It caught the attention of Producer/Director Mike Nichols, and he brought her show to Broadway where it bore the less controversial title, Whoopi Goldberg Live on Broadway. Sometime in the early 1990s, the show made it to television on HBO where I saw it. Goldberg presented a series of character monologues. Developing each persona with only a few physical props, she created each character through her voice, physical demeanor, and her words. It was a show unlike any other, as Ms. Goldberg lulled you into raucous laughter and then hit you up with a sharp slap of reality that moved you to thought and even tears. Laughter and tears is a heady combination.

The Goldberg created character that has stuck with me and been on my mind lately is a child, Little Girl with Blonde Hair. Placing a white shirt on her head, the "little girl" explained that she didn't want to be black any more and that the shirt was her "long blonde hair." Her mother had dismissed her idea as ludicrous but the little girl was convinced that there was something to be gained if she could move from being a little black girl with nappy hair to a little white girl with long blonde hair. The excerpt below is from the monologue Little Girl with Blonde Hair.

LITTLE GIRL: I told my mother I didn't want to be black no more. ... Man, she say even if you sitting in a vat of Clorox till hell freezes over, you ain't gonna be nothing but black. And she was right too, because I sat in the clorox and I got burned. And she say I just got to be happy with what I got, but look. See? It don't do nothing. It don't blow in the wind. And it don't casca--cascadadade down my back. It don't. And I put that bouncing stuff in it and it didn't even lift. And I want some other kind of hair to do something else. I do.

I laughed until I cried. I think of myself as pretty good with words, but I don't know if I have the skill to explain why this performance has stayed with me for all of these years. I think that it is because there was a piece of truth in Goldberg's show that spoke to me. I don't ever recall consciously wanting to be white, but I do recall wanting to be pretty, and pretty meant looking like Shirley Temple or Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. There were no little black girls starring in movies and being presented as cute, talented, and smart.

The wounds gained from growing up in a culture that continually reinforces your status as a people without value, whose only purpose is to serve, who by virtue of the color of your skin and the texture of your hair are--inferior--other--less than-- do heal, but the scars remain. Ms. Goldberg's brilliant performance spoke to those scars, told me that I wasn't alone, reminded me that I shared an identity with a strong and resilient people who were not afraid to take a look at ourselves and share laughter as we struggled to overcome our adversity.

This morning when I got out of bed, I realized that my great nephew, Donovan Josiah will grow up in an America that offers hope and opportunity for him that I did not expect to see in my lifetime. I thought about my mama who died before she could see Barack Hussein Obama take the oath of office. I thought of the disrespect that she endured in her lifetime, the dignity with which she held her head high in the face of the realities of a society that worked over time to reinforce that black people were inferior. I recalled my father telling me of having to ride in the back of the bus as a boy while German POW's were allowed to ride up front, of his long journey to the west coast after enlisting in the military, again at the back of the bus. Even his uniform, worn in the service of his country wasn't enough to rate him a better seat. I recalled the doors that I could not enter, the signs that made it clear, "No Colored Allowed." I thought of all these things today and tears rolled down my face as Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office, but the entire time that I was crying, I was laughing out loud with joy and when President Obama intoned "God Bless America," I whispered the words with him.

Barack Obama and the Audacity of Dreams

In my lifetime, I've had many dreams. Perhaps my biggest dream was that the words that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. intoned so eloquently on August 28, 1963 would become a reality. Most people only remember one part of Dr. King's speech on that day, the part where he speaks of dreaming that one day his four children will live in a nation where they "...will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

However there are other parts of that speech that resonate with me. Barack Obama has referenced a phrase from King's speech on numerous occasions, "the urgency of now." I think that Obama knows the entire speech and has not forgotten any part of it.

As Dr. King began his historic speech forty-five years ago, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he spoke of the history of black people, my people, in words that still move me.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

I was eight years old that summer and I lived in a world where the dream of racial justice was far from a reality. For all of my childhood and a large share of my adult life, that dream has been tantalizingly out of reach, that check has remained uncashed.

Tonight as I watched President-elect Barack Obama stride onto the stage in front of a crowd of over 100,000 people, a tapestry of race and ethnicity, I felt giddy with joy and hope. For the first time in my life, I feel that this is truly my country. I believe that America can and will make good on that promissory note. It won't be simple and it won't be immediate. We still have our walls that divide us and we have to learn to listen to each other, and to respect each other. We have to learn to accept our differences rather than trying to shape everyone into some generic norm that means giving up parts of one's sense of culture and identity.

It has truly been a long time coming, but I think that we may have just received a payment from the bank of justice.

The video is of an a capella singing group that I like a great deal known as Sweet Honey in the Rock. The song is entitled Ella's Song and is a tribute to civil rights activist Ella Baker. The video includes the lyrics.