Into a new world

This is just a brief post at a time when I am still very much on an emotional rollercoaster and, as such, am incapable of writing at length or with particular insight: longer posts on the remarkable US election will follow. I simply had to register my delight at what occurred last night: America's original sin, the maintenance of slavery and the consignment of African-Americans to subsidiary status in the constitution; has been expiated. Of course necessary caveats must be attached, the old south (Virginia and North Carolina have been altered substanitally by demography) showed itself to be still in the grip of its unhappy history of racial division with whites of every kind voting overwhelmingly against Obama (as an example, West Virginia's Democratic governer won re-election by 48 points, Senator Rockefeller (D) of WV by 35 points and yet the state went for McCain) and the pervasive Black underclass will remain, as will the myriad difficulties that inflict themselves singularly upon African-Americans on a daily basis. And yet the world has been remade anew, with vistas opened up to those of us of the African diaspora that our forebears could scarcely have conceived of. Let us remember the innumerable sacrifices made by those who went before to make yesterday possible, and let us also dream big: all is possible, in spite of fearsome odds. And, finally, let us wish President Obama well and keep him in our prayers: his predecessor has left a mess of unprecedented proportions for him to contend with.