‘Yes You Can’
Cats: Current Events, Kids, Politics|
A quick preface with the info that may or may not be known to the readers of this blog: My son’s birth father is african-american. Which makes us a mixed-race family.
While race has never been the reason I voted for Barack Obama, I’d be lying if I said I’m not excited and greatly moved by tonight’s historic election of an african-american president. I have friends, neighbors, family members, and coworkers who are celebrating this victory on a far deeper level than I am, but I smiled and wept as I listened tonight to the black commentators who were awestruck at the moment Obama’s election was called. While I hope race was not the reason they voted for Obama either, I share with them the celebration that the same Constitution that once counted a black American as 3/5 the worth of a white one, has brought this nation to the point where a black man is now the president-elect.
Which brings me back to my son. Ever since my wife and I decided we would be open to adopting a non-white baby, I started thinking along with all the other fathers of this nation’s black children, that when my son is asked what he wants to be when he grows up, I will tell him he can be anything he wants to be. And we want to truthfully agree when he says, ‘I want to be president of the United States,’ that it can be so. Until tonight, however, we have had a big lump in our throat thinking about that prospect, because there’s been no evidence that a little black boy could ever become president. Until tonight. Now, when my baby boy learns to talk and says he wants to grow up to be president, I can tell him without a shred of doubt, ‘Yes you can.’
Thank you America, for giving my son this opportunity, and thank you President-Elect Obama, for being an example to my infant son that he truly can grow up to be anything he wants to be.
