December 14, 2008
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Yesterday was another Christmas party except this time at Scooty and Kris’s instead of Rene’s, where we normally have it. Of course we did a grab bag for gifts. I had to buy for Keith. Recently Keith has been going on and on about about great Dave Grohl is. So I decided to get him a Foo Fighters dvd. As for me I got a tin of popcorn and a Blockbuster gift card from Chistine. The card will come in handy as I still need to get seasons 10&11 of the Simpsons on dvd. Plus the popcorn was fun last night, for a while we all sat around trying to throw popcorn in each other’s mouths. That’s right people, we get REALLY wild by throwing popcorn at everybody. Heather got Dave the perfect gift: $20 in scratch offs. One of the tickets you could win up to 10 times if your numbers matched the winning numbers. I’ve never seen anybody match every single number on a card before………….until last night. Dave won 10 times on one ticket! Now you might be thinking that this was some sort of huge jackpot, but each win was only worth $2 and therefore the total win was $20. Sure it may not be a big winning, but if you think about it the profit was 10 times the cost of the $2 ticket so when you put it that way, its a good profit. The rest of the party was fun, but nothing overly exciting, it was pretty much all over by 1 in the am.
With Barack Obama’s historic win last month, many blacks were moved to tears with joy. And although I’m probably a little late in writing about this, better late then never, right? Nevertheless, I’m going to write about it anyways. I personally know a few whites who thought it was kind of ridiculous that blacks were crying when Obama won. These were people who voted for Obama and are not racist people in the least, but they still found it odd that blacks cried. I don’t think those whites are racist, I just don’t think they get it. This was not just a monumental event for blacks, it was a monumental event for everybody. To fully understand it, you have to look back and remember everything that blacks have been through not only in American history but also in the world. Blacks have come a long way in America, some of it in a short period of time. There are a lot of people alive today who could not eat in the same restaurants in the segregated south just 40 and 50 years ago. These people remember this and experienced this first hand. Also, blacks were not guaranteed the right to vote in America until the mid to late 1960s. Blacks and whites could not marry each other until around the same time. These are all things that have happened in Obama’s lifetime. Now look back and realize that these were the same people who were legally enslaved to rich white guys. They were the same people who were literally considered half a person. These are the same people who were stolen from Africa and forced on a ship to be slaves in America. They were even not allowed to do something as simple as play professional sports until 60 years ago. And these are all things in the past, they don’t include the racism that still happens today. When you add it all up, to overcome what they have been through, Obama’s victory is huge and worthy of these people crying. Many of these same people who were forced to ride in the back of the bus or not allowed to stay at hotels or even drink out of the same water fountains as whites, believed they would never see a black person elected president in their lifetime. They have always dreamt of it, but never believed it would happen. They have been told no so many times in their life that they assumed that the door to the presidency would remain permanently closed to their kind; they believed the White House would always remain a white house. Now that barrier, the final barrier has been broken. In some ways, its as if blacks have finally reached the mountain top that Martin Luther King Jr preached about. That is why these blacks cry. If you don’t understand it now, then I can’t help you.
