I bought a cake last night, and cookies, and sparkling cider. I let my seven-year-old daughter stay up late, finish up her homework in front of the TV, and fall asleep to the prattling of giddy pundits.

These are all things that I would never let her do normally… it’s just that I wanted her to remember the evening that our first African-American president was elected. I wanted it to be etched, clearly and vividly on her mind. I wanted her to be able to tell her children, “I remember that night.”

Yet, as I watched her sleeping by the soft glow of the television screen, tears rolled down my face, and I knew that if she didn’t remember how special that night was, that would be okay too.

Getting Obama in the White House was largely due to my generation—adults under the age of forty-five who worked tirelessly, canvassing, registering, social networking, and voting. I’m not saying there were not others who voted and worked for Obama. We know that this began in the 60s, but I am saying that we worked really hard on this one, and this is a piece of Civil Rights history that we can be very proud of.

My daughter will not remember the hard work. She will be growing up with a black president in the oval office, and that will the most natural thing in the world for her. And that’s okay; in fact, that will be beautiful.

I was born in the seventies, and I often heard people who were frustrated that I didn’t fully appreciate the struggle and fight of the civil rights movement. It would happen the most in my seminary classrooms. I would listen to full-on fiery rants that young women did not have sufficient appreciation for what older women had to go through in order for me to sit in that seat. Young feminists did not fully understand. (Of course, coming from a religious background where women were not allowed to work outside of the home, I actually think I had a lot more appreciation than they realized.)

Yet, they were right in a sense. I read history books and listen to stories, but I did not live through the sixties. The protests were just about over when I came on the scene. By that time, many of the ideals that the Boomers fought for had been compromised under Reagan, and I grew up in an era of greed, when most of our energy as a nation was funneled into the economic expansion of the individual.

But I did get to sit next to my black friends in the classroom, swing with them on the playground, and swim with them in the public pool. By the time I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have thought twice about dating a black guy. I grew up in classrooms hearing—and believing—that I could be anything that I wanted to be. President even. I was able to take for granted many things that generations before me fought for, and that was a good thing.

Of course, we need to know our history, or we will be doomed to repeat it. We need to protect our freedoms, as people of color and/or as women. We need to know what happened before us. This is extremely important.

However, if there is a bit of generational amnesia on my daughter’s part, I hope that I smile, because isn’t this what we ultimately want? Aren’t we hoping, praying, fighting for a world where racism and sexism is unfathomable? Perhaps my child will grow up in a country where she cannot imagine slavery, lynching, or segregation. When my daughter reads about our country’s fearful history of racial discrimination, it will make no sense to her, and she will not comprehend how we got from there to here. If she does not fully understand the fights and the protests and the hatred that great men and women had to endure, that’s okay. Perhaps it will seem nothing less than the miraculous hand of God to her.

It seems that way to me. Because when my daughter thinks about African-Americans in our country, she will not think about any of the things that make us tremble with regret. She will think about the President.

9 Comments »