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On This Last Day of Black History Month I Recognize Barack Obama
While sitting for an interview, President Barack Obama, a comic book aficionado, was asked to name his favorite superhero. He responded to the question with a reference to Spiderman and…Conan the Barbarian.
Really? I thought. Conan the Barbarian? Well, to each his own I guess.
I wished that I was the one who’d asked him that question. After he’d have put forth his choices I would have asked, “Do you think you are a superhero?”
Because that what he was for me and millions of other citizens of the world, a real life superhero. Outsized expectations had been placed upon his spindly shoulders, some of which he would not be able to live up to. And as is the case with any superhero that steps forward, there would be interesting villains emerging from the shadows to respond.
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On election night 2008, a fresh faced Barack Obama took his spot behind the lectern as the President Elect of the United States. Obama’s ascension to the highest office in the land was a powerful symbol for progress, the realization of a dream held by millions of people past and present. His rise to prominence was beyond inspiring and unlikely, as not too long ago an individual like Obama — a product of a white mother and an African father — would have been deemed…
