Getting "Over" It

I probably shouldn't admit this, but at the moment this picture was taken, I kinda felt like Chevy Chase's character Clark Griswold, in the original "National Lampoon's Vacation" movie. Remember when he and Beverly D'Angelo and the kids were standing at the Grand Canyon viewing rail, and Clark stood there for a few reverent seconds, bobbing his head as if trying to absorb the majesty in a quick intravenous burst, and then abruptly ushered everybody back to the station wagon for the next leg of their hellish journey.

In my case, I had just shoved my camera at my tour guide, a FINE chocolate young brother named Ali, and asked him to snap me peering at the "Door of No Return" on Goree Island. That's what you do in a situation like this, right? I mean, it would have been crassly inappropriate for me to stand there facing the camera cheesing like a hayseed, given what some of my ancestors endured hundreds of years ago in a setting just like this. I figured as symbolic, reverential poses go, this one was adequate.

And then I waited. Waited for the gut-wracking sobs that hit me at the end of the Elmina tour in 2003, near Accra, Ghana. Waited for the voices of the foremothers to whisper, "You made our struggle worth it, Daughter of the Diaspora," or something equally lyrically mystical. But I got nada. Zippo. Oh, I'm glad I went, and I got some great photos.

But then I started to think, what's different now? Well, for one thing, in 2003 I was still smarting from Election Theft 2000, and enduring the Cheney presidency. I suppose if I'd known Dubyah was going to win another term, I might have flung myself through Elmina's door and crashed onto the rocks below. But six years later, there's an American President of African descent.

Is it finally time to stop looking backwards, and stay focused on the future? Should African Americans just get over all the slavery and racism and victimhood stuff and admit we've come a long way, and that we possess the power to do even better? Do we need to stop whining and just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and embrace the opportunities and challenges of the 21st Century?

Yes, of course we should. But it's still not quite that simple. Here's how I see it: You don't ask a victim of horrible abuse to pretend that what happened didn't happen, even as you help that victim move on with their life. Personally, I still don't think there's been enough discussion about, and acknowledgement of, slavery and its aftermath. At the same time, I fully acknowledge that I personally got over it years ago. Even when racism affects me now (and it still does, more than you might think), I'm still able to move forward on my own terms.

Anyway, here's my 'bottom'' line, so to speak. When I look at this picture, it doesn't just create a solemn perspective on how far Americans of African descent have come, or infuse me with gratitude for the agonies endured by my ancestors. It mostly makes me wish my butt wasn't so big. Now THAT'S progress.