"...In America, our destiny is inextricably linked, together our dreams can be one."


When you are born and your skin is not White, you are born with your head down.

I grew up in a city where I was not a minority, overall. In fact, the culture was dominated by My People. Before I even know what these things mean, I know that they were Important.

But even that young, I noticed. Pulling up to a traffic light, and the pickup truck in front of us is full of lawn equipment and seven workers. None of those workers were ever White.

A long time ago my brother made a sad joke about how we, as a race, are shorter so it makes it easier for us to scrub floors.

In spite of all the cheerleading, in spite of all the fancy people on the cover of Latina magazine or whatever, we are still sub-citizens. I still stay up every once in a while, thinking about that waitress I worked with who told me that being a Mexican was like being a dog.

My scarring brushes with racism have been few and far between, but it is there. I know full well that I have a harder shot. I know I am representative of my race no matter what I do, no matter how much I want to and try to be post-racial. I have dashed away to one of the most liberal cities in the country, mostly to keep myself forever safe from those sorts of things. Still aching from the humiliation of dating a girl from a small town, and she asked me to lay down in the car so her neighbors didn't see her bringing home a Mexican.

But I did it. I fucking did it.

I did it because when your skin is dark you learn to do it. Learn to do what you're told. It's what I try, feebly, to rebel against. But sometimes you just have to take your lumps. It's something I learned from my family's example, something they knew all too well without having to talk much about it. When your options are limited there's not much using in crying over it. Just do whatever you have to do. Just keep going.

I have never had my skull cracked by the cops (not for civil rights, anyway). I have never faced angry mobs, fought the serious fights. I avoided belonging to any sort of minority fraternity until I reluctantly joined the minority theater troupe at UT, which I gave the hilariously inappropriate name "The Drive-By Players". When I'm completely honest with myself I admit that it's out of fear. I don't want to be a minority. I don't want to be pigeon-holed, or deal with any of the limitations. I just want to be me, and I want my thoughts and ideas and talents to be enough.

They aren't, though. I'm reminded of it in times like this, where I return to the casting notices, because I'm bored and I want to try to get a part in a play. And my heart sinks when I realize that the best chance I've got is the one about immigration, or any other "piece" that specifies that "all races and ethnicities are welcome". It's a small thing, probably something white actors never even think about. If I don't see that specific message, I know that I have pretty much no shot. I need permission to enter that room. I have pretty much never been color-blind cast since moving to New York (other than w/ MCT, God bless 'em). It has been a parade of accented dope fiends, illiterates, and Foreigners. Only when I cast myself do I get to play a Normal Human Being. Only when I cast myself can I appear on stage without an accent.

But this is small potatoes, a small price to pay compared to the struggles of those that came before me. When I was born I was allowed to walk into any restaurant in San Antonio. I know that didn't used to be the case. And I know that plenty of faceless Mexicans, with skin like mine, went before me and were murdered, hanged in the city where I grew up, for the crime of being from the came place I am.

It is with these eyes that I watched that speech, that moment last night, and I had to cry. I didn't prepare to, I didn't think I would, but I cried. What exactly it changes remains to be seen. But I never ever in my life thought I would see a minority standing on that stage. It's a grudge I've borne since I was cognizant. I knew it would never happen, no matter how many bullshit "American dream" stories were shoved down our throats in school. I knew America wouldn't let it happen. Not the America I knew. Not the one that pulled me over and searched my car for no reason.

And, God bless him, he barely said a word about it. He knew he didn't have to.

Why do you have to say anything, Barack Obama, when there are pictures like the one up there to tell the story for you?

*****

Last night was monumental for one other enormous reason. Last night Obama made the case for Liberalism, not the Democratic Party but LIBERALISM, and he made it in the simple decent way that I've always understood it.

Ours -- ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.

That's the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper.

That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now.

The idea that helping our fellow man, of fulfilling the promise and the wise words set out by Jesus of Nazareth, of doing what is just plain morally decent is somehow something to be sneered at is the greatest perversion of modern time. That is the difference between the two parties, between the two ideologies, as laid out last night.

This is what I believe in, this is what I believe our government is meant to do. Private industry will never have a moral imperative to solve the things that our government should. Private industry has no morals, and answers to no one. I will never understand why they put so much faith in private industry, in these big companies that could give a rat's ass what happens to you. More to the point, if you are angry with private industry, what are you gonna do about it? It's not like the CEO of some insurance company is scared of being voted out of office. It's not like you can start this huge grassroots movement to affect change to some enormous insurance company.

But you can change government. You can hold them accountable. That is the brilliance of the design of our democracy, the brilliance of Jefferson and Adams. We don't always use that power properly, because sometimes we convince ourselves that its useless, but it's there.

I believe we have a moral imperative to help the people who can't help themselves. It drives me crazy to hear these golden-tongued Republicans crying about "welfare cheats" demanding "handouts", and saying nothing of the third-generation Harvard student getting in as a Legacy, or the children of privilege who never have to work a day of their lives. Liberalism deserves to come out of the shadows. It is not a dirty word. A thousand "tax and spend" liberal initiatives don't cost a fraction of a Republican War.

Now, I'm not some fresh-faced optimist and I don't believe that a President Obama is going to fulfill all of these great promises overnight, or solve all the world's problems. He will occasionally stumble and fall. But I believe that things will get better, and that's enough.