Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
America doesn't seem to have shared experiences all that much anymore.
We're rich with many of the world's cultures -- but often negligent of our own. Assimilation has become a bad word. With so many entertainment options today, even our own culture is so diffuse that a majority of Americans may not be exposed to the same parts of it.
Remember what a national moment the last episode of MASH was? We may never see such a commonality again. Even with the Super Bowl -- usually the biggest shared event of the year -- our rooting interests, and our level of interest, are vastly different.
Our most recent shared event of any significance -- the Sept. 11 attacks -- is seven years old, and has given away to sniping and division over how best to protect ourselves.
Given all that -- and the incredible, increasing diversity and diversions of the country -- today is a truly rare and special moment in American history: one of the biggest shared experiences we may see for years.
And one of the most uplifting.
You don't have to be African-American to appreciate the significance of Barack Hussein Obama's inauguration -- though it helps.
Even many of those who opposed Obama in the election and who will most likely disagree with many of his policies can celebrate the moment. He has been waiting for months. But all of us who pray for racial unity and equality have been waiting a lifetime.
Those young men and women who were pelted with objects, spat upon, hit and kicked and terrorized for merely attempting to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 would not have believed then that they would live to see an African-American family in the White House.
The truth is, even the fight for school choice, for the ability to sit anywhere in a bus, or to sit at a lunch counter, became a shared experience. Civil rights for all cannot be won without the efforts of most. Nor could the first African-American president have been elected if not by a shared experience: It took every race to get it done.
Even Barack Obama himself is a shared experience, born of a black African father and white Kansan mother.
No disrespect intended to Sen. John McCain -- but there is no way his inauguration could have inspired so much excitement, or so much hope, joy and relief in the black community.
And it's a shared experience. Consider: Obama's election last November required two extra press runs of the Chronicle to fill the demand for papers. And a special commemorative afternoon inauguration edition of the Chronicle today will be sold on the streets and at area Circle K stores.
"What we feel in black America," says Paine College professor Mallory Millender, is being felt throughout America."
They talk of glass ceilings for women. The ceiling for blacks was always made of sturdier stuff. But Barack Obama has shattered it once and for all.
Human beings have never been limited, except by their own hopes and dreams. But misguided societies can put lids on those dreams and shackles on those hopes. Today, the lid is off, the shackles removed for all time, and an entire people feel freer as a result.
It's an experience we are all sharing.
