An Almost Perfect Moment
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Wednesday, November 05, 2008 9:00 PM
I grew up in a black neighborhood in Southeast Washington, DC.
We were the only young white family for blocks in any direction. It was a middle class neighborhood and we all shared the same values, so there were never any difficulties to speak of.
But if you have never had the experience of being the only one day after day who looks like you on your bus or in your school or walking down your street or in your place of business, you can’t know what it is to live every moment of your life not entirely sure the people all around you really accept you. They may smile or scowl or look blandly through you, but you are never quite sure you’re not being judged or hated or resented beneath the facade.
You don’t know you belong.
Not for a moment do I compare my own mild childhood and adolescent experiences to that of a people who’ve had to overcome slavery and lynch mobs and Jim Crow laws and the soft bigotry of people who pat themselves on the back for having black friends. I’m simply saying, having had just the slightest taste of what it is to be a racial minority, the enormousness of the barrier we’ve just crossed as a nation moves me.
Is it a great thing, a cathartic thing, a potentially healing thing for the country and for all of our people that we just elected our first African-American President? It is. People in downtown DC last night were singing the Star Spangled Banner spontaneously, in an overflow of affection for this nation and its many blessings, and for the promise fulfilled. I heard a black Iraq war vet interviewed saying, “Today, I really believe all men are created equal.” That’s beautiful, and I can’t find it in my heart to gainsay my neighbors’ excitement and happiness.
It’s bittersweet in the extreme, however, that the man who embodies the triumph of our founding principle “all men are created equal” with respect to black persons should be so unwilling to extend to the unborn the same right to be included in the family of men. It shows he doesn’t know the meaning of his own triumph, and it’s a blot on his achievement much as the institution of slavery was a blot on the American founding.
For one class of persons, last night was a resounding triumph. For another, it must be acknowledged, it was a dismal defeat. Voters in Michigan amended their Constitution to permit creating embryos for the sake of experimenting on them. An effort to ban abortion in all but the hardest cases fell in South Dakota. There will be no pro-life woman in the new Senate. And the first black President will, if he keeps his promises, be also the most hostile to the inalienable rights of the unborn of anyone ever elected to the highest office in our land. He who epitomizes the rights of the descendants of slaves will work to further disenfranchise this nation’s unborn. He of all people should know better. He breaks my heart.
With Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I think that God is just.” I also take comfort in this reading from Philippians from today’s liturgy, which admonishes us to be happy warriors as we recommit to building the culture of life whatever the political future holds:
Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in this world as you hold on to the word of life, so that my boast for the day of Christ may be that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. But even if I am poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with all of you. In the same way you also should rejoice and share you joy with me.
I pray for President-Elect Obama. I wish him well because the weight of the world is on his shoulders and because I wish my country well.
You know, it is the year of St. Paul. Is it too much to hope for another dramatic conversion? Change can happen.
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
