A President Like My Son

I walked to work today so no Muni news. I did pass lots and lots of folks out campaigning for Barack Obama. Here are my thoughts:

Caroline Kennedy recently endorsed Senator Barack Obama in a New York Times opinion piece, “A President Like My Father.”

I agree with everything Ms. Kennedy wrote, but when I look at Senator Obama, I see a president like my son. Like Obama, my son is biracial. Unlike Obama, my son, born in 1995, is not unique in his multi-culturalism, or in his brownness. His is a world that is increasingly interconnected.

My son learns alongside children from Mexico, Central America, South America, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. He belongs to online communities in which borders, race and geography are meaningless. He regularly communicates with people from around the world. Much of his food comes from Central and South America, his clothes come from Asia, and the fuel that heats his home comes from the Middle East. He lives in a global economy in which some reap the rewards of this interconnectedness, but in which too many people are viewed as “human capital.”

My son is growing up in a world in which health care, food and even home mortgages are commodities traded by wealthy at the peril of the poor. By the time he is of college age, tuition costs will have inflated to ten times that paid by his parents, and his student loans will also be considered tradable commodities – potential profit centers for those who will never have to take out a loan to pay for a child’s education.

My son has visited developing countries where a lucky family lives in a two-room dwelling with a corrugated tin roof and a single water spigot in the front yard. He’s seen small children working barefoot in hot, crowded streets, selling food and trinkets to tourists from the U.S. and Europe. He has seen pictures of melting polar ice caps and families stranded on roofs in New Orleans. His world is one in which wars rage on several continents and millions of people are displaced.

His world is increasingly bifurcated – with the gap between a small population of extremely wealthy and an impoverished majority grows ever larger. And yet, at 12, he believes that individuals can make a difference. He has raised money for Darfur and New Orleans. He has made an effort to understand the slaughter of monks in Myanmar, and wants to know why Kenya is erupting into unthinkable violence.

His is a world in which policy and politics will make only a small difference in the lives of the disenfranchised. Social and human engagement on an unprecedented scale are required to change his world. With our global economic engines, technology and staggering wealth, the people of the developed nations are already equipped to effect massive change. Now we must reject the commoditization of humanity, and utilize our advantages to create a more just world.

But to do this, we need a president who can mobilize individuals on a global scale. Barack Obama’s family ties reach from Kenya to Kansas to Jakarta. He inspires hope and has already mobilized hundreds of thousands of people of all races and backgrounds in a campaign that was considered folly only a few months ago.

When I look at Barack Obama, I see the face of my son, and millions of young people like him. They are not defined by their race, but by their potential. Obama understands this. He is the man who can inspire us all to restore hope and humanity to our global world.