Hail to the Chief

Some trivia:

Barack Obama is not just the first biracial President in the history of the United States. He is also the first person in history to win both my vote AND the Presidency.

Until Obama, I had picked the loser in three straight presidential races. My very first presidential election was in 1996 when I was 20. That election I voted for Ross Perot, with whom I had become enamored during his initial run in '92. In 2000 I voted for Gore, and in 2004 I voted for Kerry.

Today, all 406 of my school's students, and every single teacher, every single office member, every single administrator, every single cafeteria worker and hall monitor, sat down in our school's library to watch the inauguration. Literally every single one. We were all in there.

I looked out at the sea of student faces, nearly all of whom are the sons and daughters of immigrants or are immigrants themselves, and I wondered what this moment meant to them.

I listened to Aretha Franklin sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and found it to be so much more beautiful than I remembered it. A song with words that maybe up until today rang hollow and with bitterness to a good portion of the American people, but now, as she sang them, perhaps sounded the way they sounded to me when I was a little boy, pure and promising. Maybe some of the people in the audience sang "my country" for the first time with a feeling that it really was their country. That's a beautiful thing, and it was the most moving part of the inauguration for me.

My students appreciated the moment, I think, about as much as you could expect most 13 and 14 year olds to appreciate it. They yawned and fidgeted during Obama's speech. But I don't think what was important was so much the words that he said. I think what was important was that they saw a very diverse group of millions of Americans all rallying around someone who, like many of them, was the child of an immigrant and was raised by a single mother.

I'm pretty sure that today, for most of my students, it was the first time they actually felt like Americans.

And, truth be told, it's the first time in a long time that I've felt like one, too.