Obama’s People

The Citizens of a New America
I have spent more than 30 years studying the experience of racial minorities in the United States. I went from the barrios of Compton, California, to Princeton and Columbia, and I am now a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas. Crossing such different spaces has engaged my curiosity and reflexivity. In "Who We Are Now" (Jan. 26), people of color come across as a combination of Hurricane Katrina and Ellis Island—we are historically framed as a demographic hurricane and we are periodically framed as part of the "new America." Diversity is new? In my research, I can tell you that we in the United States have always been this way. Racial diversity is part of our story. After being in Washington for the inauguration and reading the local papers, I thought, there is something complex and long about our story that is often missed by well-meaning folk in the cosmopolitan bubbles of New York and Washington. I am your neighbor. My uncle helped build some of the roads you drive on. My great-grandfather wrote poetry during the late 1800s after a long day of work in the Salinas, California area. Barack Obama just provided a window through which to see ourselves again.
Juan F. Carrillo
Austin, Texas

From the perspective of a 66-year-old white man, what happened on Inauguration Day, Tuesday, Jan. 20, is truly astounding. I grew up in the highly segregated and bigoted central Texas of the 1940s, '50s and '60s. As a matter of course, we used all of the hateful racial epithets or, when we were being nice, substituted "Negroes" or "colored people" for them. We told mean racial jokes and committed horrible acts toward black people. I could not imagine using a toilet or drinking from a fountain after a black person because we thought they carried diseases. My hometown was totally segregated, and no black person would dare come to your front door, go to a white restaurant or fail to step off the sidewalk to let you pass. We did not hate blacks; we just did not think of them as real people with real feelings. On Nov. 4, without giving it a thought, I voted for a black man for president. Race—for or against—had nothing to do with my vote. It was not an issue, and only after the election did the significance become clear to me. We have overcome fear and hatred, and I am looking toward the future with optimism.
John Edens
Phoenix, Arizona

Thank you for the timely article "Who We Are Now" by Jon Meacham. It is surely a clarion call to acknowledge that as a young nation we have yet to define what, in fact, it means to be American. Yes, there are the legalities of the matter. Citizenship is important. National identity counts. But we need something larger than our own individual ethnicities, religions and gender identities to bind us together as a distinct nation. As more Americans find that their neighbors are naturalized immigrants, as interracial marriage continues its upswing and the children born of those unions further blur the lines between ethnicity and ancestry, it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. Some time ago, I was taught that America was abandoning its melting-pot paradigm and embracing one that resembled a mosaic, where all the colors were distinguishable but came together to make a cohesive (dare I say beautiful) whole. As an adopted Korean and a Spanish teacher married to a French-Italian engineer, it is heartening to know that with time comes tolerance, and that after hurt there is healing. I did not vote for President Barack Obama in November. But my heart certainly soared as he was sworn in.
Rayna St. Pierre
Chester, New York

Congratulations to NEWSWEEK, its editors, staff and contributors for a truly outstanding Special Inauguration Issue (Jan. 26). I have just finished reading this commemorative edition and, in doing so, I was able to relive the thrill of Jan. 20 all over again. I shall keep this issue for many years, and look forward to sharing it with many of my friends and relatives as well as some skeptics who may not have had the opportunity to wander through the pages and once again know that "Yes, we can." Thank you for reminding us.
Don Rounds
Roseburg, Oregon

I read with interest your Jan. 26 article "A Team of Expatriates" about how many of President Barack Obama's top advisers, like a growing number of Americans, have studied and lived abroad. Let us not forget that President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps for that reason. His intentions were for U.S. citizens to mingle with people of other countries so that they would experience, interact and learn about different cultures and achieve an understanding and appreciation of the way others think.
Anastassios Kalos
Nea Makri, Greece

The Bush Legacy
As sharp as he is, George Will can't twist facts enough to exonerate George W. Bush ("43, for a Final Time," Jan. 26). Bush's pre-emptive attack on Iraq had nothing to do with security inside or outside our borders. By any measure, his destruction of the Iraqi nation destabilized the region and provided a seedbed of hatred for the United States. I am one of those "unhinged critics" who feels that the Bush administration's policies have nearly bankrupted us, and I will be joined by future "hinged critics" who will need to deal with his crippling legacy. History may cushion the harm, but it won't obscure the ideological perversion of the Bush years.
Larry Hourany
Mckinleyville, California