I’m really happy that Barak Obama is going to become President tomorrow. Really, I am. But after at the end of a long weekend (with another long day to go for much of DC) that has been nothing but Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. (thanks Oprah), I’m starting to feel a little cynical.
It’s a major historical event. it is worthy of celebrating. And tomorrow I’ll be as giddy and as excited as everyone else. But you know what,there’s a bunch of things that won’t change with Obama’s swearing in.
Thirteen-year-olds will still get shot in their front yards in my neighborhood come late spring and summer.
Homophobia and fear will still be deadly — for down-low African-American and Latino men and the women they sleep with – as the HIV infection rate rises.
Young black men will still go to jail more often than college.
ICE officials will still raid meatpacking plants in Iowa while we struggle with who we keep in and who we keep out.
Our armed forces will still not at all resemble the American population at large — despite the presence of a a McCain, a Biden and a Palin.
We are still bringing back shattered young men and women from a war we never should have started.
Money and access to power will still be the deciding factors in determining how this country runs and who runs it.
So forgive me my cynicism.
Maybe the day we really need to celebrate isn’t the first guy. It’s the third or the fourth or the twelth. When it’s no big deal, really truly no big deal, that there’s a woman or a gay man or an African-American as President because there have been so many. Then, then we’ll know that we have fundamentally altered ourselves in a meaningful way.
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