Reflection on Obama's win by Doug Udell
The day after the election I sat observing a student teacher at work in an inner city placement.
As I admired the spirit and energy of the group of toddlers at play in her room I couldn't help thinking, do they know their world has been changed today? Something that was not previously possible has become so. Virginia, the cradle of the civil war, went blue and helped propel a black citizen into the presidency. Well over two centuries in the making, all of us were here when it happened. Many of us helped.
And if all goes well those toddlers will one day think little of it, this huge thing, no more of note than watching a black man or a Latino take his turn at bat on any summer day in any of two dozen scheduled major league baseball games around our country.
Yes, it was a good day. Maybe we haven't fully arrived, maybe the mountaintop is still up there somewhere, maybe we're still climbing-but heavens, turn around for a moment and take a look at that view!
It's funny how in a democracy a small margin in an election can change history. Virginia only chose to secede before the Civil War by a quite small margin. George Bush was elected in 2000 by a very small margin of the vote (a negative margin, in this case).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in grade school, my teacher taught us how Harrison, or whoever, was once elected when his opponent had more votes. This will happen again, she said, and only then will there be the initiative to reform the electoral college. I find it irritating that now that it's happened again, in 2000, there's still been no reform.