What is Right About America Posted 12/23/2014 | AMAC Authors12 A nation is defined by its aspirations and accomplishments - By Robert Charles – – Sunday, December 21, 2014 Everywhere, we suddenly hear words of division, difference, recrimination. Suddenly, America is Ferguson, Missouri writ large. But are we? Are we not still Americans, first? We harbor 316 million different dreams, each born of one spirit. Peace and love, freedom, respect and being “one people” are all hard stuff. What’s new? It has always been so. Isn’t that what America is really about? Isn’t that what makes us Americans, that belief in the possible? Is trust hard to build and maintain? Sure, but it always has been. Still, we are the exceptional people who have shown it can be done, adversity notwithstanding. We have learned over two centuries that progress requires patience. Ask Booker T. Washington, Satchel Page, Frank Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Louie Armstrong or Michael Jackson. But let’s get deeper than that. Ask Mae Jemisim, Stephanie Wilson, Joan Higginbotham or Yvonne Cagle. Now there are some real Americans, the sort we can all pause and admire. You haven’t heard of them? Well, you should have. Mae was a Stanford graduate, majoring in chemical engineering, fluent in Russian, French and Swahili, and a doctor of medicine from Cornell University. What else? She served in the Peace Corps and was an avid aviator. Oh yes, something else. A black American, she was a Space Shuttle astronaut. So was Stephanie — three missions on the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Joan? Another astronaut, on the Shuttle Discovery, an expert in electrical engineering with 308 hours in space. And Yvonne? Also an astronaut, a biochemist and a doctor of medicine at the Johnson Space Flight Center. They are all women and all black Americans. They are also incredible Americans. What’s the point? It’s worth taking time to think about the hope, achievement, promise and exceptionalism they each represent. Because they are women and black by heritage? Yes, and because they are American. Did they overcome incredible obstacles? You bet. Did they face more obstacles than others? Almost certainly. But more to the point, they believed in the possible — for America and for themselves. They are heroes who risked all for their country — no excuses, no half-measures. They wanted and found windows of opportunity, then flew through them. They must have had beacons in their lives — mentors, teachers and parents who cared, communities around them and people who reminded them on more than one occasion to keep believing in America and in themselves. And that is America. They realized the
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 01:14:41 +0000
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