Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The Morning After

One of our fine upstanding area citizens reacts to the President-Elect.

Closer to home -- which is to say, the office -- it was not a happy morning for my coworkers, grousing about "black people voting for Obama just because he's black...that's no reason to vote for someone!"; of course, when Sarah Palin joined the McCain ticket, these same people were waxing ecstatic about "a real small-town working mom just like us" in the race for high office.

Sigh.

On the other hand...another co-worker, whose high-school-aged daughter has been working hard for the local Democratic Party office this fall, and who knows my own political sympathies, greeted me this morning with a bear hug.

"My grandfather was a Southern racist," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "Once my grandfather hit my grandmother after she stepped off the sidewalk to make room for a black man to pass. And now -- now I've lived to see the day when a black man could be elected President in this country. Thank God!"

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sigh. The first is proof of how far we still have to go, but the second is a joyous reminder of how far we have come!

Auntie Knickers said...

There will always be losers like the Klan guy. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's the sole member in the area. And remember, you can feel proud that Michigan's electoral votes went to Obama!