The Synergistic Pen

Consider this, if you will....

I am 4th generation american of african descent in this country. My family came to be on this continent by means not of their choosing...

My ancestor(s) survived a grueling voyage, humiliation, slavery, institutionalized ignorance, violence and death....

And I am here...

In this country, where being who I am is either inadvertently or overtly dismissed as being.... unimportant... enters a man....

this american of african descent knows nothing of the grueling voyage, humiliation, slavery, institutionalized ignorance, violence or death...
not the way I know it...

yet... this man... knows what it means to be inadvertently or overtly dismissed as being.... unimportant....

Does his journey being different from my journey give him a different perspective of the world in which we both live?

yes... and no.

because... in THIS country... because of the COLOR OF OUR SKIN... we are the same...

he knows things I'll never know...
like... how people who aren't of african descent REALLY feel about him...and me... and us... because he lived among them...intimately...

he understands things about others that, because of the colorful nature of his upbringing... I couldn't even begin to grasp....

and he brings every bit of that to the table....

and I'm loving it...

I remember a few years ago when Tiger Woods first became this "sensation"... how he didn't want to be called "black".... I wasn't quite sure what he meant by that...
we all thought he believed himself to be too good to be black...


but I understand it now...

you can't dismiss the parts of you THEY can't see... or don't understand...
you HAVE to be colorblind in your own home... or you won't be able to live there...


those of us who survived the grueling voyage... don't remember "us"...
its sad...

I almost envy him...for he knows..... truly knows who he is...

and that is to be respected...

and that is what makes him such a great man....


Barack Hussein Obama...
you go boy!