Milo Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
- Some 145 years after the United States made slavery unconstitutional, 59 years after freedom riders took desegregation into America’s deep south, 43 years after Thurgood Marshall became the first black man to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, 42 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King and 26 years after Jesse Jackson first ran for president, an African-American has reached the pinnacle of the American establishment.
A black man is running the White House.
Even a few years ago, that sentence would have seemed like a corny line lifted from a Hollywood film. In fact, for generations there have been dozens of movies and TV shows — often comedies or disaster flicks — dwelling on the improbable prospect of an African-American president.
Barack Obama has finally turned that idea — a black man in the Oval Office — from a fanciful notion into hard fact.
