{"id":133,"date":"2009-01-20T12:48:29","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T12:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/president-obamas-best-line.html"},"modified":"2009-01-20T12:48:29","modified_gmt":"2009-01-20T12:48:29","slug":"president-obamas-best-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/president-obamas-best-line.html","title":{"rendered":"President Obama&#8217;s best line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">&#8220;&#8230;a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served in a local restaurant, now stands before you to take a sacred oath.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Consider that. Today, my 5 year old daughter came home from kindergarten and told us that as they watched the inauguration in the cafeteria, a teacher told them the story of &#8220;the lady who wouldn&#8217;t get off the bus, so they took her to jail.&#8221;\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I grew up in Tennessee and Alabama, and racial slurs were part of the family vernacular. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I became best friends with Rashaad, a black guy at my junior high school. I spent countless hours with Rashaad and his family. Like a lot of suburban white boys, for a while I believed I <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">was<\/span> black, or became so as much as my hairstyle, clothes, music, and language would allow.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I understand now that there was nothing unusual about my white appropriation of black culture, but I&#8217;m grateful that my southern eyes were opened through Rashaad. As an English Literature major in college, I poured over African American literature; some of my most formative reading experiences were with Frederick Douglass, James Agee, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Malcolm X, and Toni Morrison. I took their stories as a searing and true lesson of a world I knew not, and was grateful for the education.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>All this came to mind as I watched this morning. I shivered and teared up when President Obama observed that he was taking an oath in a town that, just 6 decades ago, had restaurants that would not give his father service. I have a teensy weensy grasp of the African American experience, but what I have I feel deeply, and because of it, I couldn&#8217;t be prouder of my country today.\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;&#8230;a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served in a local restaurant, now stands before you to take a sacred oath.&#8221; Consider that. Today, my 5 year old daughter came home from kindergarten and told us that as they watched the inauguration in the cafeteria, a teacher told them&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>President Obama&#039;s best line - Text Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/president-obamas-best-line.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"President Obama&#039;s best line - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;&#8230;a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served in a local restaurant, now stands before you to take a sacred oath.&#8221; Consider that. Today, my 5 year old daughter came home from kindergarten and told us that as they watched the inauguration in the cafeteria, a teacher told them&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/president-obamas-best-line.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-20T12:48:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"President Obama's best line - Text Messages","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2009\/01\/president-obamas-best-line.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"President Obama's best line - Text Messages","og_description":"&#8220;&#8230;a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served in a local restaurant, now stands before you to take a sacred oath.&#8221; Consider that. 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