David Miliband

President Obama

You cannot help but be moved by the scenes and the words.  I just heard a young (black) student say that he felt more fully an American today.  I watched the inauguration in my outer office with my next meeting sitting/standing.  Whose idea was it to call a Parliamentary vote to coincide with the beginning of his speech?  Parliamentary democracy waits for no one...

I think I wrote on November 5th that I was a junior high school student in Boston in 1977/78 when students were bussed across the city to the suburbs to achieve some racial integration in schooling.  No way would you have believed then that America would elect a black President before a woman president.  On the World at One the co author of Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech of 1963 - actually I think I am right in saying that the written version of the speech did not have the 'dream' sequence, but Dr King was encouraged to use the riff by his aides shouting from the side of the stage - said that despite the huge struggle that lies ahead to complete Dr King's dream of the eradication of poverty in America, January 20 2008 was a cathartic moment.  Things won't/can't be the same because America will have smashed what many people presumed would be the the hardest part of the colour bar to break.

Posted at 17:40 21 January 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[2]