1/20/2009/The Inauguration of Barack Obama - 1/20/2017/The Inauguration of Donald Trump

Eight years ago, the USA embraced, elected and inaugurated Barack H. Obama
> because it sought to live up to its hopes, desire to change, and bury "America's
> Original Sin; Racism". Historians in time will celebrate the successes of Barack
> Obama, and uncover how the nation had not yet dealt with its anti-black DNA.
> Despite, the support of a majority of the voters in 2008 for Obama, from the very
> beginnings of his presidency the subtle and not-so-subtle expressions of racism
> responded to the nation's first black President, and his family who "lived in a
> House built by slaves." Those of us of all races who have overcome our racist
> DNA, thought our support of Obama would relegate the anti-black racism to the
> sidelines. We therefore ignored it, sought to deny or minimize it, or were silent
> about its presence. We were like the people whom theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
> described as 'good people who do not know that (on race) they are not good.'"
>
> Today, the nation inaugurates Donald Trump as our President. He becomes my
> President, and I cannot condone non-cooperation with him as was the non-cooperation with President Obama by Republicans. I am an 83 year old African American "Segregation Survivor", born in North Carolina who "grew up" in Texas
> and South Carolina. Despite the racial segregation of hospitals, neighborhoods,
> schools, churches, rest rooms and waiting rooms, the military, lunch counters,
> restaurants, seating on busses and trains, Doctor's and Dentist's office, Colleges
> and Seminaries, Methodist Retreat Centers and Pennsylvania Honeymoon Lodges, etc. that I have known first hand, I, and the African Americans of my generation have sought, when in the presence of racism; when the racially insensitive or racists, "Go low, we go High."
>
> May we resist the manifestations of Donald Trump's lesser Angels, without resisting him personally. He too, like Barack Obama is an "Agent of Change".
> The difference; Barack Obama sought to re-shape and change the future. Donald
> Trump seems to believe that re-shaping and change is achieved by retreating to
> the past. This, the nation must resist with ever fiber of its being.
>
> Peter Wehner in an article titled; "The (Republican) Party's Over", TIME, March 21,
> 2016, describes some voters past and present; "Voters are complicit...many of them have come to confuse cruelty, vulgarity and bluster with strength and straight
> talk." May, "We the People" regardless of our politics, resist this kind of confusion.
>
> May we because of the Obama presidency, and the prospects of the Trump presidency be able to say of ourselves what Langston Hughes says in his poem;
>
> I've known rivers;
> Ancient, dusky rivers.
> My soul has grown
> deep like the rivers.
>
> May we insert WE, instead of I, and OUR instead of my.
>
> Gil Caldwell