Ten Degrees

Yes, it's that cold. I arrived late last night, around 12:10 am. I had to connect through Las Vegas (played a few dollars of Wheel of Fortune quarter slots, with no luck -- thank God the plane started to board or else I may have played more). About half the plane looked to be Bay Area/West Coast folks on their way specifically to the inauguration, judging from all the Obama hats, T-shirts, and buttons we all sported. The excitement was palpable.

Before boarding the flight, I got teary and emotional, thinking about how one day I will be able to tell my kids, nieces and nephews, godchildren, grandkids, and students about how millions of us descended upon Washington to be a part of history, to witness this only-in-America moment. I thought about how my very cynical students in History 465 in 2005 once laughed mightily when I asked if they thought Barack Obama could be elected president. "He'll be shot first," one of my students said earnestly, with heavy sadness in her voice. No one in class felt that the country was ready for this moment. I know how everyone felt. In the midst of the Bush administration, the inauguration of the nation's first black president was inconceivable in the spring of 2005, and to even dream it would be to risk heartbreak. It had already been five years of heartbreak, and we didn't want more.

But here we are.

I guess what really made me teary yesterday was thinking about my young godchildren and my nieces and nephews, all under five: Tayondee, Mahalaya, Triston, Nona. The first presidents I remember were Ford and Carter. It was unfathomable for any of my generation to think that the president of the United States could ever be anyone but a white male. But these children, these lucky ones, will only know Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and the First Family. There will be no limits to what they believe they could accomplish. They already point him out when they see him on magazine covers and on TV: "Look, there's Barack Obama!" They don't necessarily understand who or what he is, or what he represents, but they know he is smart and important and a powerful leader respected by millions. And he looks like them. That's so powerful.

For my two nieces who are African American/Mexican American/Pinay, Tayondee and Nona, I know this moment is especially meaningful for them. They will see little girls who look just like them growing up in the White House and they will never for a moment think that power is reserved only for the white and privileged. Oh, the possibilities for all of them make my heart ache with joy. There will always be racism, and the Obama presidency does not usher in the end of racism, I have to adamantly argue. All of my godchildren will have to encounter the ugliness of racism. But it is my hope -- because of the powerful symbolism of the Obama presidency -- they will never again, at least in the ways my generation did, wrestle with self-doubt and internalized racism and colonialism. They will never experience a moment where they say, "I can't do that -- no one who looks like me can ever achieve that." It was like two moments in my youth that were pivotal. When my dad bragged that my cousin Joan May was going to Harvard to get her Ph.D., and the moment in which I met my first Filipina graduate student (Cathy Ceniza Choy) when I was an undergrad. Those moments helped me believe that I too could go to graduate school and become a professor. I had never imagined academia for myself until I saw Pinay professors. So imagine that. Their dreams will be even bigger than anything my generation could have imagined.

Today I'm staying in here in Virginia at Donna's apartment, staying out of the cold, and writing all day, but you'll get more from me tomorrow, when we venture out to the Capitol to get our tickets from Pelosi's office.