Hope Part Two?
Nah... this is different
In 2008 I remember where I was and how I felt as Barack Obama gave his magical speech the night of his election. I sat alone in my basement apartment, reflecting on my own life and experiences, and I cried—a lot. I then in my true nerd fashion wrote my own speech, that I had no platform with which to deliver, about the feelings in that moment. It was a feeling of hope, hope that this country was moving in a positive direction for people like me and others who were so often left out. America and its promise seemed reachable, tangible at last.
Then life happened.
Two years later I was in law school and subject to more racism than I care to account. My senator proudly proclaimed he would do everything he could to make our President unsuccessful, and the proverbial gloves were off.
I got a copy of Obama’s speech overlayed with the American flag and hung it up in my room. The words of a future being realized, forever memorialized on this poster, serving as inspiration to everything I did and everything I faced.
In 2016, we all know what happened. Hate won. Racism won. Sexism won. Many used the pent-up racial anxiety they harbored to make America hate again and our country spiraled backwards.
From that ‘election’ on, people felt free to let their hate flag fly—literally. A country that felt on the precipice of change in 2008 was not a safe haven for those angry about anyone who looked or believed differently than them.
In 2020 I had the honor of serving as the Executive Director of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, the state agency tasked with enforcing the Kentucky Civil Rights Act. What we saw numerically, was that since 2016 race related discrimination complaints skyrocketed. For the first time they overtook employment discrimination based on disability. It wasn’t shocking, but it was telling.
Since the office was non-partisan, my speech poster did not sit in my office then, but at my house where I often worked. I kept it up for inspiration and motivation that what we were doing was right and that the moral arc of the universe would one day, actually bend towards justice.
But why does this come up now? Why bring this up again? Well, I have two other related moments I will forever remember. On December 3, 2019, I was at the AC Hotel in Cincinnati getting dressed for a work event when my preferred presidential candidate—a Black woman—announced she was suspending her campaign. It hurt because when she announced, I felt a glimmer of hope again that was then deflated.
On August 22, 2024, I watched that same woman accept the nomination as the Democratic candidate for President and then I saw the image we all saw. The daughter of her great-niece Amara, watching Vice President Kamala Harris on the stage.
Throughout the speech, like the speech for President Obama, I cried. I watched the women, especially the women of color, in the crowd as tears flowed down their faces. The pride, the optimism, the reminders of so much pain—all on display in this moment and I was brought back to my basement apartment in 2008.
That poster with the Obama speech has followed me to every house and every job I’ve had since graduating law school, a reminder of the hope that I possessed, that we possessed. As the darkness overtook the country since 2016 it seemed hope would never return, that we would never see joy.
I was wrong. But this time is a little different. After all that we have been through as a nation. The division, the hatred, the pain. The present day, where a future looks so promising is no longer a feeling of just hope. It felt like affirmation. Affirmation we can get to the other side, together.