WP, pg1: America's History Gives Way to Its Future

[DeepModem Mom]

America's History Gives Way to Its Future
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2008; A01

After a day of runaway lines that circled blocks, of ladies hobbling on canes and drummers rollicking on street corners, the enormous significance of Barack Obama's election finally began to sink into the landscape. The magnitude of his win suggested that the country itself might be in a gravitational pull toward a rebirth that some were slow to recognize.

Tears flowed, not only for Obama's historic achievement, but because many were happily discovering that perhaps they had underestimated possibility in America....

***

Presidential elections often reveal something about the nation's character, its temperament and state of mind. Many who are wondering how it happened that Barack Obama was elected president this season are also wondering what else they may be missing in their cities and towns and neighborhoods. Transformation rarely announces itself with trumpets. It usually happens gradually, over time, and then -- clang!-- a singular moment chimes the news. From its founding, the United States has seen itself as a special place, an example to other nations, a "city on the hill.'' With the election of its first black president, it can now begin to erase one of the stains on that reputation, one that repeatedly shamed us in front of other countries....

***

Some of the nation's old cleavages are disappearing, and Americans are beginning to rethink their notions of each other. Are the states really red or blue? Are the suburbs really white middle-class enclaves? Are the cities really wastelands for the poor?

Latinos have spearheaded half the nation's population growth this decade. Blacks are migrating back to the South. Millennials are migrating toward each other, regardless of race or ethnicity. They are helping to define these times simply through their mastery of the Internet and their idea of borderless social interaction. Like that 89-character text message that's been forwarded from cellphone to cellphone, a new generation honoring an older one: "Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack is running so our children can fly."

The millennials may have found their first president -- one who engages them in their own space. The political geography of the country is getting all mixed up, too. The movement of Californians and new immigrants to states such as New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada are changing the complexion of the inter-mountain West.

And then there is the living history of America, an America with citizens who were sharecroppers, who were chomped on by dogs while trying to register to vote, who hid behind hooded white robes at night and ran businesses in the day. They are us, too, still alive, living among one another....

***

These are strange times. Obama carried Virginia, even its Prince Edward County in the Southside rural region of a state that was once the soul of the Confederacy.

Strange times.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/05/AR2008110500148_pf.html