History

I don't care what your political leanings are, right now we can all be proud to be American. In fact, I've never been prouder.

Sometimes I worry about the fate of the country and of the world. There are so many doomsday predictions of overpopulation, climate change, cancer, genetically-modified organisms, unemployment, poverty, genocide, materialism, achievement gaps, failing school districts, discrimination, corruption, pork-barrel spending, uninsured children, war, terrorism, energy crises and--the list goes on. I can't list all the potential threats to the survival of the human species. Sometimes it's hard to imagine that we're really at the top of the evolutionary food chain when we've gotten ourselves into a bigger mess than any other species on Earth.

And yet--look at what we can accomplish when we try. One hundred and fifty years ago, white men still held blacks as slaves. Less than a century ago, this country practiced legal segregation. White children and black children weren't worried about health insurance coverage; they were worried about equal schooling. Jim Crow laws ravaged our America the Beautiful and divided the nation into a white-versus-black civil war of sorts. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stepped forward to inspire change, his dream was a world away. He only wanted his children to play in the streets with white children: he never said a word about his children having sleepovers in the White House with white children.

That is how far we have come. On Tuesday, we proved to everyone who thought it wasn't possible that, yes, any child in America can grow up to be whatever they want. Once again, America is a global leader. How many countries have elected a minority leader? How many countries can say that a biracial man born to a foreign father has held the reins of national leadership? Today I am proud to be an American. I am proud of my country; I am proud of the progress we have made, and I am proud to see what happens next.

I am thankful that I'm young enough not to know a different world.

The challenges are still there, of course. Discrimination and poverty and achievement gaps and climate change and all that stuff still exists. But if America can recognize its wrongs and move beyond slavery and segregation to proudly set an African-American in the White House within the course of 150 years, think what we can accomplish in the next century. When my kids are old and wrinkled with the years of a life well-lived, what kind of world will they be part of?