So, after an excruciatingly long campaign, America has elected its first African-American president. We've heard all the adjectives by now: "historic", "seminal", "inspirational", "thrilling" etc. But I did not anticipate feeling the way I did the day after the elections. I woke up on the 5th of November feeling inexplicably good about being in America. And the first thing I thought to myself was, "I don't think I'd mind being an American citizen now."
For many years now I've been decidedly unenthusiastic about applying for citizenship here. The idea of putting my hand to my heart and pledging allegiance to the United States made me very uncomfortable. Sure, I love my American friends, I love the academic institutions I've been affiliated with, I love my Midwestern cat, I love my home, my garden with its view of pine trees and maples, now turning vermilion and gold. But feeling a sense of belonging to a place, a land, a people is vastly different from feeling any affinity for everything a nation stands for...and for the past eight years, this nation has seemed to stand for all the wrong things.
But on November 5th, it seemed like America came closer to its ideal than it had ever before. Sure there are still inequities here, there is still corruption of the highest order, and domestic and foreign policies that sicken the soul; but there is also that sense within me that here, now, we have a chance for redemption. I think to myself, "If this country can elect a person called Barack Hussein Obama to the nation's highest office, if the majority of its people are capable of growing past the basest of xenophobic reactions, then this is a country I would like to be a part of."
If someone had asked me a few days ago if an Obama presidency would make me reconsider my stance on citizenship, I would have shrugged and said 'no'. But, unexpectedly, his victory has given me a sense of optimism not only about America, but about the nature of humanity and its capacity to see difference, accept it and think beyond it.
