History In The Making

So a few weeks ago, I just turned 61. 61. And turning 61 means that I've lived through pretty much the last half of the 20th century and, you know, so far what we've got in the 21st century. And that means that I grew up at a time when America was very different than it is now. I grew up in the Bronx, and growing up in the Bronx in the '50s and the '60s was in an Italian family, in an Italian neighborhood. Not all Italian, a lot of Jews, Black kids, Puerto Ricans, working people. We were working people. I went to public school. That meant that racism was an everyday part of my life. My family was racist. My friends were all racist. Our language was deeply peppered with all manner of racist epithets. And it was normal. It was just what people did then. Bothered me. Bothered me. I was a strange kid. I had different ideas. I don't know where they came from, I swear, I don't know where they came from. I had different ideas than my friends and my family about race. Not when I was young, but when I got to be a teenager, it was just weird. It just struck me as weird that we had this— we still had this hangover of racism 100 years, less than 100 years when I was growing up, after the Civil War. And then in the mid-'60s, Lyndon Johnson— I mean, Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the Voting Rights Act. I mean, and I remember what preceded the Voting Rights Act. I remember the National Guard going into Little Rock. I was a little kid. I remember the National Guard going into Little Rock. I remember Eisenhower sending the National Guard into Little Rock. I remember George Curly Wallace. I remember Bull Connor. I remember the dogs. I remember the fire hoses. I remember All that. All that. I remember the shootings and Medgar Evers and all of that. I remember my friends laughing about lynchings, the idea of lynchings. I remember them laughing about the Klan. I remember them making up secret hand signals and secret icons to express racist ideas, put on their notebooks, you know. I did too when I was a kid. Before, I looked at it and I thought, what are you doing? What is this? What does this mean? So Seeing Barack Obama nominated as President of the United States last night, regardless of what you think of him politically, regardless of what happens in the election, is a monumental moment. In my life, it's a monumental moment. And The progress that we've made is astounding. Astounding. Now, I know there are still— we know, forget about me, we know that there are still— excuse me— there are still racism. Racism is not going to go away. But institutional racism, Legitimized racism, separate but equal, black water fountains, not being able to sit at lunch counters, not being able to get jobs, not being able to marry interracially. Remember? That's gone. That's gone. And now there's an African-American man running for the presidency of the United States. I, you know, I didn't think I'd see this in my lifetime. I did not think I would see this in my lifetime. So it's easy to forget when you're in the middle of something amazing, that you're in the middle of something amazing. But for me, last night was a pretty amazing moment in my life, just to be able to say, "Wow, I got to see this after where I came from." And I came from, you know, the part of the country that was supposed to be you know, cool with people being black. We weren't all that cool. Still may not be all that cool with it. But institutional racism. And you know where that comes from? The beginnings of that? It comes from the military. It came from Harry Truman, you know, saying, "Nope, we're going to have Black." It came from World War II. It came from, you know, there's a long history and it's gotten us to a place where regardless of what happens and regardless of what people hold in their hearts, Institutional racism is gone. It took almost 100 years after the Civil War, but it's gone. And that's a great thing. That's a great thing. So, tonight's going to be pretty cool too. Take it easy.