From TPM Reader CL …
At our magnet school in South Central Los Angeles, I was asked to say a few words to about 120 of our male students the day after Obama was elected. I told them that this year (then 2008), the person our school was named for–Martin Luther King–was assassinated forty years ago. And I told them that if at that time, or ten years later in 1978 or ten years after that in 1988 or ten years after in 1998, they had placed a wager with me or anyone living that America would have a black president in 2008, they would have won a lot of bets. I mean, they would have been rich. Because in all of those years, to think that this country would elect a person of color as president was beyond the realm of possibility. Most of my students are black and brown. Until Obama was elected, the idea of being president of the United States was, frankly, so far outside of their experience it was not something they could relate to. Now, that’s changed forever and I cannot overstate the importance of that.
