The Content of His Character

When the moment came, it surprised me.

Not the outcome. I had been cautiously optimistic for several days that Senator Obama would win. But "caution" is the key word--there was a great deal of optimism, whole barrels-full of hope, that had been bottled up because, frankly, we've seen voting shenanigans before. (And there were some--emails sent to Democrats declaring that because of long lines at polling places, it was perfectly okay for them to come and vote on Wednesday. But this sort of thing only really works when the race is close. It wasn't.)

And this is the sort of history that isn't made easily. I am the descendant of a Southern slave-owning family, and I've seen these changes in my own family. I knew very well my great-grandmother, born in 1896, who would openly talk about "those little pickaninnies" playing on the corner. As the child of a hippie, liberal to the core, now living on the "left coast," I was an Obama fan since about a third of the way into his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention--but had the rest of the country made these changes along with me and my family? (Bear in mind my own Californians' appalling decision on Proposition 8, in this same election.)

And it's been so bad for the last eight years. Way back in 1994, when the Republicans were sweeping into Congress, there was another result that disheartened me even more: George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards to become governor of Texas. I watched him at the podium, making his victory speech, and I was filled with dread. I could see so clearly what was coming; but still, when it came, it was so much worse than I had ever feared it might be. For the past eight years, this has not been my America. It has not been generous, it has not sought peace, it has not led by example. My nation has done things that filled me with horror: spiriting innocent people away in broad daylight, sending them to nations where unspeakable things could be done to them, any idea of individual rights stripped away at will. It has been so bad, and the idea that this ship could ever be righted again seemed to drift farther and farther away.

So when the moment came, when Obama's victory was declared right at 8:00 p.m. local time, I could tell the moment was coming--the electoral math was such that California's preordained result would put him over the top--but when it actually happened, when I saw the words blaze across my TV screen, it genuinely took me by surprise.

Because I had not expected to be so moved. I had not expected that the optimism, pushed down and bottled up, might erupt as vehemently as it did. I had not expected the sense of relief to be as enormous as it was. And when CNN cut to footage of the celebration at Ebenezer Baptist Church, I had not expected it, and tears just kept rolling for a good five or ten minutes.

It may not be the Promised Land, not quite yet. But we're a lot closer than we were, and damn if that isn't just about the greatest thing I've seen in a long long time.