President Obama, What About Equality for All...Once and for All?
by Staff
February 17, 2009
WASHINGTON, (christiansunite.com) -- This is Black History Month and the air is just beginning to settle on the fact that the United States of America finally has a black President.The inauguration of the first African-American president fell in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day, and because of this, we were able to reflect upon the journey, the struggles and our achievements as Americans and most importantly as human beings.
It is truly difficult to fathom what must have been going through the minds of those from the Civil Rights era. They faced brutality and death and for a time it must have seemed that there was no light at the end of the tunnel in the quest for equality. Black people simply wanted to be known and treated as equals after being relegated to second class citizen status for literally hundreds of years.
Although I am a child of the eighties and nineties, and therefore removed from the horrific lynchings and battle to defeat Jim Crow laws, I still feel a sense of catharsis.
As a child, I remember when someone who looked like me was not even allowed to be the main character in a Hollywood movie (without being a stereotype). I remember white kids in the playground telling me that it was wrong for me to "like" a girl unless she was black, which would have posed a problem since there were very few black kids at the private Christian school I attended.
Sadly, I recall an ignorant peewee football coach called me a nigger during practice. I was only 11 years old!
The point is, we have all experienced racism it is true that the election and swearing in of a black president seems to drop a hammer on those things that we have struggled against. I must reiterate that it is cathartic in that sense because there are still some big problems here. How do we not see history repeating itself?
Babies are the new second class citizens. We are still of being lynched, but instead of being hung in a tree, we are lynched in the womb. How is it that a helpless baby can be brutally killed then tossed aside so easily and without consequence?
I wish President Obama the best of luck, and I think he is an intelligent man with basically good, intentions for our country, but what good are those intentions if he refuses to see value in all Americans? I still don't understand how he can call a baby a punishment. I don't see how he can live with himself believing that a harmless baby who survives abortion should be ruthlessly killed anyway.
How is it that black people who lived through the long struggle for equality and experienced racism and violent hate crimes can now not want to fight this fight against the slaughter of the innocent? I strongly feel that status, size and the abilities of a human being are not proportional to the degree in which they are deemed important.
My hope is that President Barack Obama and all of our political leaders will fight for ALL human beings. I hope and pray that the under dog, in this case, small children, will someday soon have a chance at life.
I didn't cast my vote for our new president, I couldn't. Many of my friends didn't understand why--many were very angry with me. But I had to stand firm. I told them: I'm pro-life and I cannot be "cool" with a president who does not stand for the things that I stand for no matter what. Abortion is wrong--dead wrong!
Lawson Lipford-Cruz is the President of Black Students for Life and a Black Studies major at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
