Mixed-race child can see a president who ‘looks like me!’

African-Americans throughout the United States and the world will be talking about the 2008 elections for years and generations to come.

They will replay Barack Obama’s election night speech over and over; they will collect the newspaper front pages that note the nation’s “Change of Course” (Athens Banner-Herald) or call Obama “Mr. President” (Chicago Sun-Times). At my employer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, people packed the lobby Wednesday and Thursday mornings for a chance to buy extra copies of the paper that heralded Obama’s “Historic Win.”

They see a man who gives them hope, who promises change. They see him as the culmination of the civil rights movement.

I see a kindergartner.

My son’s teacher had been talking to the class about the presidential race in the weeks leading up to Election Day. If you asked my son who was running, he could name three candidates — Obama, John McCain and Bob Barr.

But it was an ad on TV that sealed it for him. William saw Obama on TV, turned to my husband and said, “Daddy! He looks like me!”

Like President-elect Obama, my sons are mixed-race children. At times I’ve worried about the nation they would inherit. Yes, progress has been made. The fact that I went to school without being spat on and can vote without being harassed proves it. But this is also a nation where I’ve been asked if the 5 1/2-year-old with the auburn hair (a kiss on the head from his late maternal grandmother) is actually mine.

William doesn’t know that my mom, his Nana, was arrested whenever she and her friends sat down in certain restaurants. Or that his maternal grandfather, great-grandfather and great-uncle all served America overseas, yet were treated worse on these shores.

What he does know is a man who looks like him wanted to be, and soon will be, president of the United States. For him, that was enough.

For me, it was everything.

One day, when William and his younger brother are a few years older, I’ll tell them about what their grandparents and other ancestors endured so that they could grow up in a world where Obama could become president.

And when that day comes, I will pull out my newspapers from Nov. 5, 2008, and show them the day history was made. But most importantly, I will tell them how I let an excited 5 1/2-year-old touch the screen on my voting machine and vote for the guy who looked like him.

• Cindy Murphy, an AJC editor, lives in Decatur.