GirlTalk

I wanted to go to Washington, D.C. and share in the revelry. But thoughts of dealing with traffic (even normal D.C. traffic is horrendous) and a heavy workload deterred me from that wish.

So, I like millions of others around the world, turned to the TV.

It was pretty awe inspiring to me to see the humongous crowd that descended upon the Mall (and that’s when I was really glad I hadn’t gone!). The whole event was a morale booster to so many Americans. In spite of the depressing economic climate, hope is still alive.

Obama’s election and swearing in gave me a sense of hope, that maybe this country is getting better. After all, you cannot take care of others properly unless you take care of yourself first. And treating people differently because they don’t look the same, speak the same language, practice the same religion, have the same amount of riches or pick a spouse of the opposite sex is just wrong.

What ever happened to the Golden Rule? To treat others as you yourself would like to be treated?

In the late 1980s, I was working as an insurance salesperson for a non-standard insurance company in Daytona Beach, Fla. We sold mostly auto insurance to people who had less than stellar driving records, although we could also sell policies to drivers who records were clean too. I was about 27.

I had my auto insurance with a standard company, because I had a clean motor vehicle report and the rates were cheaper.

My insurance agent, a black woman named Hettie, who had become my friend over the years because of our mutual interest in insurance and our clients (we often referred people that didn’t meet our companies’ underwriting rules back and forth to each other) ran into some hard times. She had to give up her agency. She was the only black person in her district. My boss decided to hire her. Hettie was about my age.

One day we were talking about civil rights and segregation. Hettie told me that when she was a little girl, she had to ride at the back of the bus. I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.

I said to her that all that stuff had happened a long time ago. She reminded me that it had only been about 24 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been signed. It was then that I remembered that the Civil Rights struggle was still occurring when I was a small child.

I grew up in the North, in New York. We didn’t have that there that I remembered. I’d always had black children in my schools and they rode the same bus I did and didn’t have to sit in the back.

I was horrified to think that my friend had to endure that degradation and humiliation. I was appalled that in this country where people are encouraged to reach for the American dream, that some people were considered not good enough. It went against my religious training also, where I had learned the Golden Rule.

I had to apologize to her, even though it wasn’t me that had committed that atrocity toward her. I apologized to her because I was truly sorry that she was treated so badly by fellow Americans.

I’m sure that Obama’s ascension to the presidency will not erase the hundreds of years of awful treatment endured by many black Americans. I can only hope that it is the beginning of a better way for all of us black, white, Hispanic, Native Americans, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Atheists.

And hope might just be enough to keep people working for change.