Dear Children

Dear Children,

On November 5th, 2008, the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, became the first black president of the United States of America.  It wasn’t supposed to happen.

Black people first came to the Americas as slaves. For the next three hundred years, Africans and Americans of African descent–in short, your ancestors–were held in legal bondage in the United States, mostly in the South.  It took a civil war, which ended more American lives than any war since, including two world wars, to end the practice.

For the next century after that, however, African-Americans were still subject to Southern laws of segregation–referred to as “Jim Crow” laws–that were so callous and brutal that African-Americans weren’t much better off than their slave forbears.

Though there were considerable opposition from every corner of American society, the plight of African-Americans in the United States was allowed because the myths surrounding African-Americans were disseminated for so long, through so much of society and were so pernicious that even African-Americans themselves began to internalize and believe them.

That’s why in February 2007, even after then Sen. Barack Obama had been making a strong case for his candidacy with record breaking fundraising, that an African-American state senator from South Carolina, Robert Ford, endorsed a different, and white, candidate for president of the United States, arguing that he wanted to protect the Democratic Party from Barack Obama.

“Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose,” he argued “because [Obama's] black and he’s top of the ticket.”

Republican’s, presumably, agreed. There were three special elections in 2008 to replace Republican members of Congress that had left office since the 2006 elections. The last two were to find replacements for Southern seats in the House of Representatives (Louisiana and Mississippi). In these two races, Republicans pointedly tried to tie the Democratic contenders for those seats to presidential hopeful Barack Obama, clearly trying to play on the history of race in America.

But it just wasn’t American–black and white–hatred of African-Americans that threatened Obama’s historic candidacy, but it was also black hatred of their plight in America that threatened Obama’s candidacy.  Frankly, white Americans’ fear of black retribution has played as much a part in undermining American unity as white injustice against blacks.  That’s why the revelation of Obama’s long time pastor’s own hostility to America nearly doomed his historic candidacy.

Recognizing that the discussion of race in America was poison to his candidacy, Obama first tried to breeze past this particular controversy like he had breezed past the general issue throughout his campaign.  Ultimately, though, he was forced to confront it with a March 18, 2008 speech that tried to not only save his campaign but even tried to re-write the rules for how noble Americans attack the race question in the future.

Within two months, and despite Ford’s fears, Republican hopes and, maybe, because of Obama’s speech and candidacy, those Southern down ticket seats went to the Democrats, in one case for the first time in over a generation. (The third, for the seat of former leader of House Republicans, Dennis Hastert, also went to the Democrats.)

I would argue that the coup de grace to Ford’s argument, however, did not come until Monday, May 19, 2008. On that day, U.S. Senator Robert Byrd endorsed Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.  This is remarkable, in part, because his home state, West Virginia, gave the nod to Obama’s final competition for the Democratic nomination by a 41 point spread.

More darkly, this is also remarkable because Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, joining at 24 and, eventually, rising to be the president of his local chapter. Then, as a member of the U.S. Senate, Byrd set the record for longest continuous filibuster by one Senator when he spoke against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for 14 consecutive hours.

Thus, with his endorsement of a black man for president, Sen. Byrd bucked history.

And thus, on November 5th, 2008, the United States of America made history.

Love,

Dad

 

Dear Children

Dear Children,

I want to tell you about a hero. Her name is Nichole. Your mother and I met her for the first time on Monday, when she gave your mother a sonogram to check on the yet-to-born one of you two. She’s new to the practice that delivered the oldest of you two.

She came from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a hospital that, its website says, “provides health care and services to soldiers, their families, and a large community of military retirees.” She was a soldier and doctor, there.

The hospital had recently been in the news, unfortunately, because the Army had let the buildings fall into disrepair. This mismanagement was particularly galling because Walter Reed was full of soldiers injured in the Iraq War, a conflict that was also mismanaged, starting even with the call to start the conflict.

These things immediately came to mind when she mentioned her previous assignment, so I asked her if she had served in Iraq and if the war was why she left the military. She responded that she had served 6 months in Iraq (noting that that was a lot less than the usual 18 months) and, seemingly kind of sad, that there were many reasons for why she made the move, including her own three year old child and husband who still serves in the military.

Then I remembered that this Monday also happened to be Veterans’ Day. I wished her a happy Veterans’ Day. She, in turn, marveled. She expressed surprise that she had attained such a lofty position.

It seems to me that someone who was not only willing to serve in combat, but actually did serve in a combat zone, wouldn’t marvel at becoming a veteran. It seems to me that they would feel due. She must’ve long held in high regard others that had served and was humbled that she could have done what they had done. This is what makes her a hero in my eyes.

Service is impressive. Service under horrible circumstances is particularly impressive. But to be surprised that you could have so served is humble service. Humble service is more than just impressive; it’s heroic.

I’m grateful that you two will get to meet her.

Love,

Dad