Something Has Shifted

Dear Nana,

When you were born in 1909, slavery was less than 50 years past. The abonimation that was slavery, while not fresh in the minds of Americans, lived on in the memories of your parents and grandparents as a stark reality. As you grew up in New York City during World War I, children played "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo" and caught an "n" word by the toe, rather than the tiger that requires capture among today's youth. But that was, contemptibly, the way the world was.

As you reached adulthood and middle age, things began to change. You turned up the radio to listen to a young black preacher who spoke of change and hope. You watched on a grainy black and white set as a president challenged you to ask what you could do for your country and not the other way around. You were stunned in 1968 when in April and later in June two men were gunned down for dreaming of a country where a water fountain didn't require labeling and the school in which you taught would gladly open its doors to any child.

But despite these devastating drawbacks, your country forged ahead, making strides toward righting the greatest wrong in its storied past. Over the next 40 years, as the 20th century came to a close, you having lived through nearly all 100 years of it, you began to see a country that, although often meeting failure, attempted to live up to its once-false creed that all people are created equal.

And now, 99 years after you were born, an amazing thing has happened. When Barack Obama was elected to President of the United States last Tuesday, something shifted. I wish you'd been here to see it.

The election days in my own history have proved to be emotionless, humdrum affairs. I seemed to always be choosing the lesser of two very similar evils. But not this year. On election day the energy in the air was palpable. New York, as you know, nearly always goes Democrat, a single vote seemingly frivolous because the conclusion is inevitable, the end of the story known because the last page of the book has already been read. But despite this, people lined up to vote in droves. They wanted to be a part of history, for better or for worse. Something had shifted.

"Better" won out this time and the next day as I walked to school, in a slight daze, tired from a late night of reveling in the idea that I would always remember this moment, that children and grandchildren would one day ask, "Where were you on November 4, 2008?" I was glad that I now had a positive historical moment to add to my own life's story. That my "where were you when" questions would not be limited to the shadow that was cast by the last terrible lived-through moment in 2001. Despite my sleepiness, I was giddy with expectation. I couldn't wait to see my kids in Harlem, to celebrate with them this hard-won battle that their ancestors had been fighting for centuries. As I boarded the subway for 125th Street, I scanned the faces of those around me. People were smiling. They were making eye contact. There was a spring in their step rarely, if ever, found at 7:30 am. Something had shifted.

A special assembly was called at school. In most schools, I imagine, an assembly about election results would have to remain uncommitted to a party or a candidate. In most schools, an assembly would be informational. Results would be discussed, opinions about and experiences with the democratic process would be reflected upon. Children would return to their classrooms in much the same fashion as any other day of the year. But not at the Storefront. There, it was a celebration. Pure and unadulterated. I led my 2nd graders into the Common Room. "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" blasted through the room and children from 4-year-olds to 14-year-olds, danced and sang along to this song with hopeful lyrics written nearly 30 years ago, lyrics that dreamed of a moment that had finally come. A five year old slapped hands with her classmate and swayed to the voice crooning through the disco beats calling "There've been so many things that have held us down
But now it looks like things are finally comin' around." Something had shifted. This disco song, no longer just a throwback to a time of bell bottoms and afros and white suits with butterfly collars, but an anthem to progress.

A spontaneous clap, clap, clap-clap-clap-clap, OBAMA, clap, clap-clap-clap-clap, OBAMA erupted in the room as we took our seats. And I sat back against the wall, an insider in this community, but really an outsider, at least on this day, knowing full well that despite my delight at the previous night's outcome, this moment, this celebration, could never hold the kind of meaning for me as it did for the children and parents and teachers in that room for whom Barack Obama didn't just offer the hope of change for the country but the hope of delivery from the past. I looked at the sea of wide-eyed faces as they listened to parents and teachers and fellow students make tearful "shout-outs" about Barack Obama and knew that these children would get to grow up in a world that their parents never had the chance to. They would grow up in a world in which their parents and teachers could tell them they could be anything they wanted to be when they grew up. Anything. And for the first time, we would be telling the truth. They would grow up in a world where the words "I have a dream" would no longer be the limit. Something had shifted and dreams could now be replaced with "yes we cans". Those dreams could become realities, surpassing former limits. They would grow up in a world that might actually be limitless.

Something has shifted. It hasn't shifted far enough or wide enough or long enough to erase or even muffle the echo of the past. It has probably barely been felt in the many places where racism refuses to lose it's grip. It will take more moments like November 4 and more people like Barack Obama. It will take countless dreamers and believers and "yes we can"ners. For me to truly say, to truly think that this election will bring the kind of sweeping changes that my school assembly had conjured in my mind, would be naive. I know that we still live in a world full of bias and uneven privelege that will take more than a single president to unravel. But for now, something has shifted. Something has shifted and I felt it.
Love, Katie