on racism

It’s not enough that I cry after reading Barak Obama’s speech on creating a more perfect union in this country. It’s not enough that I danced last night with my black boyfriend’s 88-year old black grandfather at a black fraternity scholarship ball. It’s not enough that I believe in racial equality. It’s not enough. I am just one white woman who grew up mostly in the Midwest, surrounded by prejudice and bias, whose parents preached that all men were created equal in God’s eyes but discouraged my fledgling romances with the Caribbean boys of Nevis because they were from a different background, who thought that Michael Jordan was hot "for a black man." I’m a white woman who has come to learn that the only thing that separates one race from the next is our ignorance of each other, our unwillingness to explore and accept each other’s distinct peculiarities of color and attitude, our unwillingness to see the beauty in all creatures. I am not enough to change the world. But I know I am not the only one. Imagine.

I will vote for Obama. I will be intolerant of intolerance. I will have babies with a black man.