My First Post

I've been toying with the idea of starting a political blog for over a year but other things have interfered with my life. Yesterday one of the most historic elections in U.S. history has happened and I'm still amazed that the first African-American president has been elected. I'm surprised because I have long assumed that I would never see a person of color elected as president in my lifetime. When I was a child there were still much racial hostility among the adults due to the Civil Rights movement. While Jim Crow had been dismantled by the time I reached elementary school, I grew up with adults using the "n" word and hearing some adults in my own family say that he/she would disown his/her own daughter if she would marry a black person.

There was some smashing of the barriers over the years. When I was a child, I only saw one intermarriage and that was in my church. (The man was white and his wife was an Asian woman he met while he was in the Army and stationed in South Korea.) But that was accepted because the woman didn't have very dark colored skin. (I've always suspected that had she come from a nation where the people had darker skin--like India or Bangladesh--it would've been a different situation because the skin color would be closer in shade to African.) I remember when I went on a school trip to New York City in 1979 and I was shocked to see mixed-race white and black couples openly walk in the streets holding hands.

But over the years I gradually began to see more mixed white/black couples being open about their relationship in Maryland and even have mixed-race children. Despite all this I didn't expect to see a person of color occupy the White House mainly because of the political dirty tricks I've seen. I still remember the 1988 election when Republicans used Willie Horton to help defeat Michael Dukakis and elect George H.W. Bush. The idea of a person of color even being elected president seemed so remote.

But it happened and there's a potential for something good to happen in the U.S. I figured that it was a good time to start a political blog documenting life in the U.S. under Barack Obama. I also would like to finally use my undergraduate degree in journalism (with a minor in government and politics) from the University of Maryland since I had worked hard to obtain that degree only to being unable to obtain a job that even remotely resembled anything I studied in college.

I am still tired because I spent two nights in a row where I stayed up until 1 a.m. I don't mind losing sleep since something amazing had happened in my life.