Hope and Healing: Part 4 -- Personal Reflections

I didn’t live through the racial tensions of the 1960’s. Unlike my 75-year old father, I was never arrested for sitting in front of a “White’s Only” divider on a bus, nor did I witness a friend beaten to near death for being in the wrong neighborhood. But I can recall several profound instances in which my “blackness”, my scarlet letter, was psychologically suffocating.

Once, during an exit interview as I was leaving for graduate school, the director of personnel for the Fortune 100 company that I worked for couldn’t bring himself to extend a counteroffer to me. “You have to understand how difficult it is for a white man of my generation to come crawling to you like this,” he finally said, agitated. I was stunned and speechless. I left his office – and the company – feeling humiliated, marginalized and, somehow, ashamed of who I was. I’ve often wondered if that was his intent.

On another occasion, my graduate school classmates – primarily white, but a few minorities, many of them my friends – chose, as part of an annual Variety Show, to sing and dance to their own original lyrics:

“I want to be a minority

So companies can come looking for me

All in the name of equality”

I recall walking out of the auditorium, again feeling hurt and humiliated, wondering if that was secretly in my white classmates’ minds whenever a black person was extended a job offer. “You go, Affirmative Action Girl!” I imagined them saying. This time I was not marginalized but angry and outraged. Humor and Freedom of Speech, my classmates and the University defended. Divisive and insulting, I replied. In retrospect, both perspectives were right.

My skin has gotten thicker over time. I often wonder, though, if someone like me -- educated, solidly middle class, having been accepted into some of the leading institutions in the country -- could struggle with feelings of inadequacy and marginalization, how must others who are less fortunate, indeed less included, feel everyday?

It's hard to describe how I felt when Barack Obama was declared the next President. I recall being so moved when I saw the tears stream down Jesse Jackson’s face. I felt happy and relieved and, oddly, exonerated. I was no longer "guilty" of being black. My humanity, my equality had been validated. Perhaps one of my Facebook Friends said it best when he posted his post-election status as “ecstatic that when he tells his daughters that in America, with hard work they can be anything they want to be, he is finally telling the truth.”

Next Tuesday, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. And I wonder, when the ceremony ends, the crowd leaves and the barricades are removed, where do we go from here?