Danniyal is witnessing history
This title appeared as the Facebook status of my friend Danniyal — a first generation arrival from Pakistan. In grammar school, he became my son’s best friend, and, through that introduction, our families became exceedingly close. Today, he is a senior in high school, possessing a stratospheric GPA and a mind that amazes and delights the old fart who taught him algebra over a distant summer. During the election campaign, too young to vote, he volunteered for Barack Obama and, as occasionally happens with nacient campaigns, managed several events for the candidate. Today, amidst applications to college, Danniyal is interested in a career in public service, and, seeing his Facebook status, I sent him the following message:
Toward the end of her life, Amy and I interviewed my grandmother about what she had seen during her lifetime. With a grin, she admitted to having been a flapper at speakeasies during Prohibition, of seeing a Wright flier soar over Birmingham, AL for the first time, and, most glorious of all, observing the first moon landing in the company of her grandchildren. She also described the fears felt when the country seemed to be falling apart, with the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, and, alarming to my modern ears, asserted that, at one time, the KKK possessed a purpose and lost its way. She was, after all, a product of her time and her geography, and was informed by the imperfections of both.
This inauguration is, indeed, historic for many reasons — the persistent and continuing miracle of a bloodless transition of power, the ability of a nation to reverse course at the ballot, and the pride of a family who marvels that one they knew as a teenager actually made something of himself as an adult and is contributing to the advancing arc of history. What strikes me as less amazing is the firstness of an African American president. That could have been achieved earlier in so far as our laws allowed it after the Civil War. This could have happened sooner, and we have had black candidates of accomplishment, intelligence, and inspirational oratory before.
Instead, the true wonder of this event is that, after our painful history, we have finally arrived at a point where prejudice was an insufficient force to deny a meritorious man such high office over the triviality of pigment. And that is as significant an accomplishment as any witnessed by my grandmother. In her case, the listed advancements were authored by a much smaller collective of contributing brilliance, inventiveness, and excellence. In each case, those advancements may have represented the pride of a nation but not the achievement of a nation. In this case, the advancement is not the accomplishment of a single man or his campaign team, despite the pride you should feel this week, but, instead, the collective leap of society.
The closest equivalent in our history I can recall was the sacrifice of World War II, which trumps all others (including this one). This event demands no loss of life or protracted hardship. Civil Rights, while fostered by an indefensible injustice, seems distinct from the election, and, even if asserting a nexus between them, was a hardship unevenly borne and borne by less than a quarter of us. Unlike World War II, no bodies float lifeless on the Potomac as they did at Normandy. Chocolate, gas, meat, and ladies nylons are not rationed today as they were in the early 1940s. Gold star banners do not adorn the doorway to indicate offspring killed in the undertaking, as they did with that war.
And, strangely, that makes this event all the more substantial, because, as a nation, we arrived here through no catalytic trauma compelling such fundamental change. Instead, change arrived because our character as a people achieved a critical mass of collective maturity, sufficient to set aside an intolerable sepsis, because doing so served our best interest. In other words, he was not elected to be a first (as a token or catharsis). He was elected for a more fundamental and germane reason, one consistent with the ideal of democracy. Simply put, he was deemed the most meritorious in a contest filled with legitimately worthy contenders — a victor in a meritocracy.
Welcome to history as it is made, and, above all else, recognize the maturity of this moment. It is not the product of partisan pablum or political force-field analysis (weighing the power and effect of key personalities and interest groups). Instead, you are witnessing national adulthood — a fleeting and rare event in the life of any nation. Wallow in it, if you seek a political life, because its attainment will be your persistent goal and its allusiveness your principle frustration. But without this example, you might not recognize it as the paradigmatic ideal, and, without it, you might confuse the alternative as sufficient to define productive service.
