Megan Pritts: Obama's Historic Victory Opens the Door to Dreaming

They say that although African Americans are no longer in physical bondage, our minds remain affected from 200 years of psychological abuse. For over 200 years we were told “no” in a country that promised “yes” to everyone else. After slavery was abolished, when we thought we would finally have an opportunity to embrace these opportunities, southern reconstruction legislation told us “not yet.”

We stood there for decades waiting outside the gates of the American Dream. Dr. King and Brother Malcolm told us that the gate was open, but most of us stood on the outside looking in, afraid that it was not yet our time. We thought that it would be impossible to be disappointed in being denied entry if we stood outside the gates.

This mentality told me to disengage myself from this election. I thought that there was no possible way to be disappointed if I remained uninvolved and watched apathetically from the sidelines. “We’ll see an African-American president one day,” I would tell my friends. “It is just too soon for Barack.”

There had never been an African-American president to walk through those gates before. Of course, we’ve seen African Americans run in the presidential primaries before. Many had gone on the campaign trail before Barack Obama, but very few came close to making any significant noise in the political races. Then came the Iowa caucus of 2008, and for the first time I felt that maybe this was it. Maybe this was the invitation most of us had been waiting for. A state in which over 90 percent of the residents are white voted for the self-proclaimed “skinny black kid with a funny name” rather than one of the most powerful women in the country. The next week, however, New Hampshire came and went, and I regressed back into pessimism.

I stayed there, outside the gate, for the duration of the Democratic primary. I would wear the occasional “Yes We Can” shirt and keep up with him on the news, but I never felt fully confident that he had a legitimate chance of winning the presidential election.

Most of us only feel comfortable crossing into the American Dream if we have seen others of our kind do it. Hundreds of thousands of children in the inner city have dreams of becoming professional basketball or football players. Why? Because those are the only successful African Americans a vast majority of them may see. The only people that they know who have crossed the gates are these professional athletes, so they limit themselves and structure their lives around reaching this goal.

Tuesday night, Barack Obama gave them something else to aspire to. As the results came in, I sat in front of the TV for a while, pinching myself. Words could not express how I felt. I was obviously happy that Obama was elected president. But that’s not what kept me sitting on the couch for the next five minutes, speechless.

The president is the representative that the United States presents to the world. I knew that it was now my time — nay, our time — to embrace all of the opportunity America has to offer. For the first time, I felt that America wouldn’t mind if someone who looked like me were in charge. Upon further reflection, I was beyond speechless — I didn’t know what to do.

So I marched to the White House. I didn’t march because all my friends were doing it or to get on the local news. I didn’t do it because I felt that all would now be right with the world and that our problems under an Obama administration would all be solved. I marched because last night I finally walked through the gate that Dr. King and Brother Malcolm said was open. I marched, in the freezing rain, because that’s what people do after accomplishing a great feat.

Megan Pritts

Friday, November 7, 2008

Obama's Historic Victory Opens the Door to Dreaming

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