I join all Americans in welcoming a new day of freedom in the US. However, that jubilance is tempered by the continuing denial of freedom for all by the christianists. Not all Americans are equal. Gay Americans have a bittersweet feeling. Happy that Obama promises a new day, free from the tyranny of the Republican elite, but saddened by the christian insistence on denying full citizenship rights to a small minority who never hurt anyone, never threatened anyone and have suffered the indignities of the majority for millenia. Make no mistake, I for one, will do all I can to deny the christian menace a forum free from logic. I will hold their feet to the fire when they make false and misleading statements to frighten others into denying equal rights to all Americans. So Christianists out there reading this, the heckler in the back of your church is me. Forcing you to read your savior’s words of love and non-judgmental acceptance and reminding you that your bible is NOT the Constitution of the United States, and has little relevance in determining my rights.

YAY Purple Girl! You took the words out of my mouth. I agree with you whole heartedly about the Baby Boomers. Their greed has wrecked the country.

I was at the polls by 7:30 this morning in West Michigan making my mark for Obama/Biden.

I could not possibly be more delighted that Americans of African descent have cause to celebrate the 50% of soon-to-be President Obama’s DNA that migrated here from elsewhere.  Such cause for congratulations is long overdue and proof positive that we actually mean what we say about equality in the opening of the Declaration of Independence and the Amendments to our Constitution. 

  But,. . . do you suppose that we can now finally stop referring to people by the amount of melanin in their skin and/or geographical heritage, especially since the evolutionary record strongly suggests 100% of us in our past originated from the African continent?  Wouldn’t it be far better to start bringing us back together for once instead of focusing on our differences?  Wouldn’t it be best to refer to him as what he really is. . . a “Real American,” an amalgamation of what we can and should be?  A pride and joy for us all?

I respectfully submit that Mr. Obama is not “African-American” but, rather, an American African. His ancestors didn’t come here in chains. And he can, presumably, trace his Kenyan ancestry.

It is precisely because Mr. Obama is not descended from slaves that he is so widely accepted. As you know, there are innumerable anecdotes of African-Americans donning African or Middle Eastern garb and gaining acceptance at restaurants and hotels otherwise closed to blacks. Mr. Obama’s myriad laudable achievements notwithstanding, I suggest the same dynamic applies to his candidacy.

A final thought is the semantic imbalance between the racial identifiers “African-American” and “white.” More appropriate would be “African-American” and “European-American,” or “black” and “white.” Similarly, the term “Caucasian” is a misnomer, as relatively few Americans can trace their ancestry to the Caucasus.

Nice, Eugene. It’s good and good to hear.

I’ve also got to address Purple Girl’s comments. Wow—“ME” indeed. I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Lest you forget, or perhaps, even at 46, you somehow missed that “Boomer,” “Me” and “X”  are Madison Avenue labels created to provide a phony context to sell us stuff.

OK, you bought it—fair enough. But I think that, while clearly not ironic, it’s quite interesting that you’ve chosen this historic day to introduce your brand of age and class venom. Goodbye old boss, hello new boss. Thank you, we needed that.

Your survey group of one campaign office (with its carefully-researched demo of no one over 50 or under 70) seems a little thin, especially to launch a bitter tirade that trashes a whole generation of Americans who took care of YOUR parents.

I got up at 4:30 a.m. today to cast my vote for Senator Obama.  Was fourth in line at my polling place.  My first vote as a naturalized citizen was in 1960 for then Senator John F. Kennedy and I have never failed to vote in all the intervening years. I regard voting as a sacred trust.

This is an historic day for America.  We’re taking our country back.  The Silent Majority has found its voice.

A “Bliss it was this day to be alive” moment!  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and all our great Founding Fathers would be proud of us.

Thank you Eugene for atriculating what many of us feel.

You can bet that a lot of black 50+-somethings are reminiscing today about their youth in this country. How many, like me, paid summer visits to grandparents in the south and had to be schooled on tenets of Jim Crow, learned how to stand in the colored line at the Dairy Queen and water fountain. On our annual car ride from Chicago to Alabama, my mother fried tons of chicken because we would not be served in restaurants along the way.  And my father always gassed up before hitting Mississippi so that we would not stop for anything while in that state. My grandmother, unfortunately dead, was a lifetime contributing member of two organizations she deemed the most important in her life—her church and the NAACP. She tithed both equally.

Most of us really can’t believe this.  Although I worked and donated to the hilt for Obama, I really didn’t think he’d win the nomination, much less the presidency.  After all, nothing in my life experience would make such an idea a logical possibility. The only black senator in Congress could be president of the U.S., leaving the Senate exclusively white once more.  Perhaps that will change as people make more of an effort to get to know each other and re-envision what this country is about.

Very moving.  I hope an Obama presidency will be a wrecking ball to the racist propaganda introduced by slave traders and perpetuated to this day.

I’m white.  But I feel like the Jim Crow tactics practiced in Florida in 2000, while focused on black voters, damned all of us.  It’s a painful object lesson in how our entire society is worsened by such bigotry.