Historic is the buzz word surrounding international celebrity and U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration - fittingly the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Obama's story is monumental and historic not only because it is proof that "the American dream endures," as First Lady Michelle Obama says, but also because he is America's, you guessed it, first African-American President. However, in our search for becoming a more civilized and just society, as Obama has been known to say, "We have a lot of work to do."
Nonetheless, this day is perhaps most meaningful and uplifting for the older generations who saw America progress from the gloomy days of segregated schools and Jim Crow to Brown v. Board of Education to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and finally to Inauguration Day 2009 and Barack Obama.
Many ask what this means for America? The media and many Obama supporters seem to believe that his inauguration marks the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that his "four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
While I admit that a tear or two might have found its way down my cheek as NBC announced America's first black president and a united America stood up in unanimous cheer, I quickly wiped those tears off and rolled up my sleeves because I realized that there is still work to do.
I am not talking about policy work, because I don't stand on the same side of the aisle as Obama on that matter, but social work - so to speak.
The fact is that while the election of President Obama is evidence of progress for race relations in America, we are still far from becoming a color-blind nation. As Martin Luther King Jr.'s son said, "Though it carries us further down the path toward equality, Barack Obama's election does not render my father's dream realized."
The importance of realizing the dream goes without saying. The idea of judging someone on something that they are born into by cosmic chance is horrifying and repulsive. Yet we do it every day, and until we confront it we cannot overcome it.
Every day we reveal our prejudices by stereotyping or making simple generalizations based on skin color. How many times have you heard race come up during the campaign? The very fact that Obama's race has become such an issue is proof that we are not judging strictly on "the content of character."
Vice President Joe Biden himself, Obama's right-hand man, is a two-time perpetrator of this rampant crime. In 2006 he told an Indian that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent ... I'm not jokin'." During the campaign he said of Obama: "You got the first African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
There is not much truth to either of Joe Biden's comments. It is most likely that Biden has inadvertently associated Indians with 7-eleven from watching too many episodes of The Simpsons. And Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton are proof that the latter comment is also "historically inaccurate," as Obama says.
Joe Biden is not alone in making such prejudiced generalizations; many of us have imitated Joe Biden's foul before, whether audibly or not. In truth, it is not a foul but something deeper within us that we need to confront and conquer. Simply being politically correct is not the solution. If anything, it only covers up our prejudices and hinders us from genuinely acknowledging and overcoming them.
What this campaign has revealed is that the only person in this country who actually tries to live by the MLK dream on a daily basis is Obama himself, who avoided running a race campaign. While Obama might realize the MLK dream, America does not. That is change that we need to believe in.
