From: Michael Weinreich [mailto:x at mweinreich.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Subject: GBO and BHO
Denise --
I thought of your father yesterday as I cast my vote for Barack Obama. Your father also had a black father, and a white mother, and a whole mess of brains. I knew your father in 1961, when his future was so limited by society's restrictions on people of color. Today your father would at the very least have gotten an ivy league tenured faculty position, or maybe he would have been a Senator or even President if he had wanted to pursue that path. He could have gotten the same mileage out of campaigning emphasizing his military aviator experience as John McCain got -- plus having brains like Barack Obama -- the victory would have been even greater than Obama's. But back in 1961 he was teaching in my high school, because black men did not get ivy league tenured faculty positions in 1961, and black men did not get elected to the Senate in 1961. And that year I knew your father, that was the year Barack Obama was born. What a difference 47 years makes!
-- Michael Weinreich