It is a new America to which I return after a long election week's trip to Asia. This is not a political opinion, but a historic one.
For those of us who grew up in the 1960s, even grew up white in America, it was the decade of the epic civil rights struggles. Dr King, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks and others led a peaceful revolution so that African Americans could secure their already constitutionally guaranteed right to sit in any seat on a public bus or at a lunch counter, study at the university of their choice, or most importantly this week, exercise their right to vote.
One election does not atone for hundreds of years of slavery, a century of Jim Crow discrimination, or literally millions of individual incidents of racial prejudice and bias - the job not offered, the apartment not rented, or simply the taxi cab that did not stop. However, it is truly remarkable that the self-righting system at the heart of the American spirit could, in Spike Lee's words, "do the right thing."
President Obama will have many challenges, including the economic issues I have written about here lately (see blog post, Towards a New Capitalism), but also national security, international war and peacekeeping, and social justice issues like affordable healthcare. However, President Obama, also represents an important catharsis for America. How many of us ever really thought or even dared hope that a man who describes himself as a "mutt" could be elected the most powerful man on earth?
For some like me, the feeling is one of elation - a burden lifted, a civil war finally ended, as Tom Friedman has recently written, a 150 years on. Free, free at last. For others there will be questions of experience and competence, and for others still, since racism has not been banished from every heart by simple majority vote, hatred. But for all of us there should be hope and restored faith in the American dream. For the concept of America, well beyond the physical dimensions of the nation state, is not a monopoly owned only by US citizens.
That the City on the Hill can still shine brightly and nobly is a reason for celebration.