Indian Ocean, the indo-rock band, wrote: There is no golden past, yet we seek it ultimately. We want to leave home, and then, one day, we wish to return. But we can never go back to the same. Because, home has changed, and in many ways, so have we.
The quote probably refers to the immigrant story. However, many of Michelle Obama's comments (about the struggles of today's middle class family) stem probably from this need for her to capture the seemingly wonderful days of her childhood and offer them to her children, and the children of the families that seem so much like her own growing up.
Like Michelle, I often look back at my early years wistfully. At grad school, I had barely enough money, was in a new country too expensive and too far away from what I knew as home. What I remember is not the hardships. What I remember is the friendships. What I remember is the excitement of meeting and learning about other people. What I remember is the first time I ate guacamole at a Puerto Rican neighbor's place, the first snow, the time I tried to explain "loose motion" to a pharmacist, the first time I gingerly walked on the slippery ice in running shoes (the only shoes I owned). In our wildest dreams, patidev and I did not predict the comforts we can afford today. However, back in grad school, we knew that we had our whole lives ahead of us, and that anything was possible.
Michelle's words are simplistic and remind people of a golden past, a difficult present, and a bright future with Barack riding the white horse in a shining armor. As such, they are nice - but they do not move me.
Barack's words capture the sense of hope that we all as young people have felt. Unlike Michelle, he does not talk about the present as if the past were better. He talks about the present in how the future can be better. However, they still did not get my vote. A better future comes through decisions and actions, not words. Words may gather support for those decisions and actions. However, if the actions are not very different from Hillary's, the results will probably not be very different either. I was looking for either candidate to truly distinguish themselves on some issue.
This week, Barack Obama, broke away from talking about the struggles of middle class America, to talk about the anger of black America, and the resentments of white America. With that speech he finally got my vote. He gets my vote for his ability to address complex issues without dumbing them down into black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. He gets my vote not just for his deep understanding of the issues, but also for his confidence in the intelligence of the American people to do the same. Most of all, he gets my vote for his observation that the solution to the race issue exists not in addressing its symptoms, in addressing what people speak, but in addressing the common issues of education and opportunity that not only unite the races, but also cause the racial divisions.
I am an Indian American woman who is, on the one hand, familiar with the expectations of dress and behavior placed on me in India as a woman, and is, on the other hand, a successful professional - not in spite of, but (at least in part) because of my Indian education that has produced many women scientists, professionals, entrepreneurs, and politicians. If I understand something really well, I understand contradictions. I understand that India has voted a woman Prime Minister without her sex ever becoming a topic of discussion, let alone debate. I understand that India has banned determining sex of a fetus, for fear that parents will abort girl babies before they are born.
Few things in life are ever devoid of such deep contradictions. Outsourcing of jobs, schools, illegal and legal immigration, overflowing prisons, health care, budget deficit, are all issues full of contradictions. They all affect one another in complex ways. To make progress on such complex issues, politicians try to find a common ground. Often, "common ground" means some sort of compromise - a bit of this to appease one group, and a bit of that to appease another. This solves neither the problems of the first group, nor that of the other group. Barack Obama, has shifted the political process from finding a common ground on the solution to finding a common ground on the issues that affect us all. Once we are all united on the core issues that we need to solve, the solution is clearer.
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