A Moment in Time

There are moments that history cannot…that history will not…deny; moments that are seared into our collective consciousness as citizens of America, as citizens of the world, as citizens of a universe wherein all things are possible.

The election of Senator Barack Obama as the 44^th President of the United States is such a moment.

It doesn’t matter if we supported him or if we didn’t, the power of the moment is, to my mind anyway, undeniable.

We know the story of his roots in Kansas and Kenya and Hawaii…the story of him being half black and half white, half African and half American…the story has resonance and the election…a moment that historians to come will point to as a significant point in the history of this country…has amazing resonance as well.

I have no idea how the Obama administration will rise or fall but however things unfold the power and significance of the moment will remain undiminished (it is, I will admit, a moment I had not really dared to dream would occur in my lifetime.)

There are moments…and this moment is heartening (and now it’s up to the next President and his administration to take that moment and move forward with it.)

The "N-Word"

Thanks to a half-wit reality TV star, the “n-word” debate flared up again a while last week. It is a debate that will continue, off and on, for a good long while it seems. The “n-word” (what a precious euphemism that is) has a power and a history that cannot be denied…and should not be forgotten.

It is a word that flows freely (in one form or another) from the lips of both some redneck racists and some black rappers (an odd point of connection if you think about it)…from the pens and mouths of pundits and comedians …and from a certain “bounty hunter” who had no idea that applying the word as a venomous epithet to refer to his son’s black girlfriend would be taped and sold to a tabloid and released to the world. It is a part of the American culture and it never fails to assault the ears and wound the hearts of anyone who understand the ugly legacy of the word.

It’s quite a powerful word indeed.

Like Richard Pryor in his later days (he used the “n-word” with relish for years before having an epiphany about it during a trip to Africa) I have always eschewed the use of the word…this doesn’t make me noble or anything like that, I just never cared for the ugly word and I could never bring myself to believe that co-opting it somehow empowered it (as some black people claim.) But I know that it’s not going away anytime soon.

Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman is doing his mea culpa/rehab tour (following the footsteps of other celebrities caught out throwing slurs…yes I’m looking at you, Michael Richards and Isaiah Washington…who knew their was rehab for being a prejudiced knucklehead? You learn something new every day…) and he will probably get his show back soon (A&E put it on hiatus they didn’t cancel it outright) and life will go on. And the word…the “n-word”…will go on as well. More’s the pity for that.