Well, of course YOU did...redux!

Okay...I can now publically admit it.

I voted for Barack Obama!

Man, what a relief to finally get to SAY that! For those of you wondering why I kept it a secret, there's a ton of reasons. First of all, I'm a teacher, so I never tell the kids who I plan to vote for. They're always trying to gauge their own thoughts with my own and I want them to decide for themselves.

The biggest, though, was the subject of one of my earlier blogs and where the title for this one came from. I didn't want people throwing away my political opinion just because I was black. With some of the folks I know, just saying that I was voting for him would have made them decide to not listen to anything I had to say about ANYthing. They would have been disgusted, thinking I only voted for him because of his race and that "we all stick together".

This is patently NOT true. There are about as many divides in the black community as there are in the white community, so looking like someone does not automatically mean I'll be casting a vote for them. I was ready to vote for either of them back in the primaries, but in the end, I really just paid attention to what the candidates had to say and felt like Obama was the most likely candidate for CHANGE.

Watching the returns was amazing. I was completely overjoyed until I listened to McCain's concession speech.

And then, right in the middle, I started to cry.

All this time and I had truly forgotten that he was the FIRST (frankly, I forgot he was black at ALL!). He did such an amazing job of making this NOT about race that people of ALL races truly forgot. Personally, I really only cared about CHANGE, not making history or anything else. Even before I walked into the polling booth, Kevin nudged my elbow and whispered "Go make history." And it still didn't hit me.

But once I remembered, really understood, I wished that my (and his) grandmother had lived to see the day. My own parents (who never voted in their lives until 2000) even said they really had never expected to see this in their lifetime. Dad said he'd just never thought that far ahead. I liken it to the way one doesn't think of marrying flowers. It's not that they can't be pretty and sweet, but the idea of marriage to a plant just seems so farfetched as to never occur to you.

My favorite saying from all this was on a t-shirt:

Rosa sat so Martin could walk
Martin walked so Barack could run
Barack is running so our children can FLY.

Speaking of children, despite my attempts to NOT discuss my personal political views and stick to the basic facts of the American election process, this whole thing held my class in its thrall. I was so proud! Last week was NY Kids Voting, but I had NO info on the candidates. I was very disappointed because NO one should vote without finding out the FACTS about the people involved. So, without my telling them to, many of them went and did research on their own. When I mentioned that the US president is a world leader, one of my boys asked "How can we be so popular if our economy is so bad?" They kept asking great questions, so instead of sticking to the basics, we went deep into everything that's been hitting the US (war, economy, etc.). We even talked about what a patriot really is (ANYone who defends their country against outside influences). On Tuesday, we kept an electoral college map that refreshed every 10 minutes up on the tv with kid votes from all over the US. They were excited today when they checked the real map and saw how well the kids mirrored their parents in voting (which led to the discussion of why kids AREN'T allowed to vote).

Anyway, it's been one amazing race...now I'm just praying for the man's safety and hoping people aren't looking at me now and thinking I'm gloating. I'm not, I promise. I'm just glad to see that something NEW is happening. The world can FINALLY look at us and think we're good people again, not selfish brats that like to bully our way into whatever financially benefits us.

So, I'm all full of national pride again...and not in that "holier-than-thou-'cause-I'm-a-bigger-patriot-than-you" kind of way, either. Just the "glad-we're-back-to-normal-with-a-HUGE-sigh-of-relief" kinda way!

D.