It's Personal

Here's Gene Robinson's column in today's Washington Post on the Obama election.

He says that for African Americans it's personal.

Here's the email I sent to him in response to his column.

Dear Mr. Robinson,

I do understand why you wrote that for African Americans this is personal.

As a white man, one who might be called a European American, it's also personal in that such as I watched millions of Americans Tuesday right the terrible wrong of our white American ancestors.

It's been said that a person should be judged within his own time. The Founders wrote that all men are created equal. Their blind spot was that, to them, Negroes weren't men in the sense of being human as white men are. Women of any color didn't fare much better in that possessive, patriarchal culture.

From our 2008 perspective it's difficult to understand how they could have thought such things. And because we find it so difficult we corrected them on Tuesday. "Father forgive them because they [knew] not what they [did]." But we do know what we did.

Watching a tide come in takes patience. The ripples rise and fall back, making way for the next rising ripples. Of such is the frustration of time. But imperceptibly, incessantly, seemingly unopposed, that body of billions of parts overwhelms. And all in its way are lifted up.

Thank you for your moving words. You speak for a multitude.

Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper
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