Last night, in his concession speech, Sen. John McCain said that President-elect Barack Obama commands his respect because “he managed [to win] by inspring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American President.”  That is certainly true.  If you read my past blentries on politics, you’ll find that I made it clear that I did not support Obama for President.

However, I do recognize that (still) Sen. Obama broke what once seemed like a huge barrier yesterday, and I join in celebrating that.  For those of us under 40 it’s hard to imagine how hard it has been historically for minorities, especially black people, in this country.  It’s even hard to communicate about this without seeming like I’m from a different time and place.  African Americans feel this more than most others, but even a lot of them don’t relate to what their forebears went through.  But, one example will be enough to remind us how far we’ve come in a short time.  Yesterday, President-elect Obama won the majority of votes in two states (Virginia and Florida) and possibly another–North Carolina is still too close to call–in which it was once illegal for a black boy to attend school with white students.  Most people reading this were probably born after that, but Barack Obama wasn’t, and he’s only 47 years old.