Feeling optimistic again…
I feel like I just took my first deep breath in years. Until I heard my new President warn us of hardened hearts earlier today, I hadn’t fully realized that that’s precisely why my chest had tightened uncomfortably these past few years, as I gave up the hope that I’d always had for this country.
“America is an idea, a process,” I’d argue in graduate school and get ruthlessly mocked by friends and colleagues who (rightfully) focused their smarts on telling accurate versions of our nation’s dark past and dangerous traditions that continued those sins, obstructing change. I knew I was impressionable and frequently was sucked into spirals of despair — watching a country grow increasingly suspicious of even education. But my hope was too loud to ignore; I ultimately defended a dissertation that argued American ideals were not a static description of the past, but were supposed to be dynamic commitments to the future — a future that allowed new waves of immigrants and other marginalized communities to challenge past truths and be part of creating a new national narrative.
In reality, I was defending so much more. If I couldn’t believe in an America where we could step in to repair its past, as Amanda Gorman so spectacularly preached with the optimism of her youth and practicality beyond her years, then why did I call myself an American? My parents left their own family a world away to move to a country that they believed would make room for them, as Americans by choice.
I rejoiced when I saw that fundamental hope at the heart of my own’s family’s story reflected in Barack Obama’s vision for this country and moved to the nation’s capital during those years to do my part. There were smart discussions about the best way to accomplish progress, structure policies, and continue to march towards the idea of a more inclusive nation that reflected our growing diversity in reality.
More black and brown faces appeared in leadership roles, the White House lit up in rainbow lights to celebrate all kinds of love, and laws tried to invoke values of fairness and equity. This country’s founding occupiers would never have imagined any of this, and because of that poetic justice, I knew that the American process could be greater than the nation itself.
But the white supremacy that President Obama overcame did not disappear. It festered and preyed upon our darkest corners, telling people’s better angels to sit down and shut up. The pendulum swung back and crashed into a dark four years.
And they were incredibly dark. My faith in the importance of compassion, justice, and reason was shaken to its core. I stopped talking about opportunity and expressing myself became increasingly difficult. Once a public speaker by choice, I now said or wrote some expletive every Fucking. Other. Fucking. Word. A mentor of mine served as a professional reference for me during this period even quipped to my new organization’s board that I swore a lot, so they might want to keep those faint of heart away. I went into congressional offices to talk about higher education policy with people whose bosses said nothing as children who looked like mine were ripped from their parents and caged at the border. I felt a part of myself die as I told my inner, younger voice that we had to keep on, finding and fighting for victories wherever we could, no matter how small or seemingly irrelevant to the legislative cruelty on mass display. Cynicism closed and hardened my heart and I learned to expect the worst, yet no longer hoped for the best.
But today I felt some of that pressure in my chest release and I started to hear that inner, optimistic voice again. As our new President promised us that his “whole soul is in this” I felt inspired to follow — to try to exorcise the cynicism that had made itself at home in heart and remember that the country can indeed change. Our first woman vice president has broken through the ceiling and has the names of ancestors on her tongue that lived a world away — the Johns and the Williams have been joined by Shyamalas and Painganadus. As Vice President Harris moves into the Naval Observatory down the street — hopefully with Folger’s jars of spices — it’s as though she takes all of us little black and brown girls with her. Her mother came here believing in the same America for her children that my parents wanted for me. These are early moments yet, but I can once again feel myself choosing to see the America that they wanted to live in and return to doing my part to help us all get there.
