The Obama effect

I celebrated cautiously the election of Barack Obama as our newest president. I'm a 27-year-old black man who's been called a nigger, told that he would be great as an athlete (like there were no other options), and nearly coaxed into leaving school early for a job that would've trapped me.

All by white people.

Do I blame them? No. I blame them only for forgetting that I come from a race of people put down for so long that many families no longer hold things like a college education and self-respect as "givens" in society.

Yeah, I'm actually disappointed in my race. I'm disappointed that my 36-year-old sister said she was voting for Obama, and didn't know anything about that for which the man stood. I'm disappointed that we still hold the size of our wheels, the length of our chains and the fatness of our wallets as symbols of esteem.

I'm disappointed that blacks have allowed others to tell them how far they could reach. It's evident with all these stories where white reporters are seeing a change in the momentum, prompting "Obama's gonna make me do better" stories.

We should've been doing better in the first place.

I watched on Jan. 20 with the rest of the world when Obama and John Roberts fumbled through the oath of office. But I watched it with hope -- hope that because most of us for some reason only look up to the images that have been pushed into our psyche through television watching. Maybe watching someone succeed on television -- who isn't named Huxtable -- will allow some of us to stop what we've been doing wrong and finally realize that we've always been on equal footing.

We're the ones who made the distinction that we weren't.