As a Black man, Obama's words ran true. I listened. I heard!! And then I started to cry!! I cried because White America truly does not understand what Blacks have endured in this country. Most of what America has taken for granted is there because of a Black man... your red light, air conditioners, refrigerators, blood transfusions, and more are all the result of Black American inventors!
I retired from the Navy after twenty years of duty aboard Surface as well as Submarine combatants, and in addition, two tours in Viet Nam. I was a Sonarman with twenty years of experience in electronics when I applied for a job in the city of my birth, New Orleans. I passed both of the one hundred question test, missing one question on the electronic test, and two on the electro-mechanical test.
The job that I was applying for entailed my installing and maintaining a life-support monitoring system for elderly people. I returned a week later to obtain the results of the test. I was told by the man that owned the company that I had passed both test with the highest scores of all that took the test, but... the but sent my heart racing! I had a wife and five kids. I needed a job that would support my family.
The owner told me that he could not, in good conscience, hire me to go into the White homes of Metarie, LA and install a system that was going to monitor the health of someone's ailing Father or Mother. He said that they would never tolerate my presence, and I knew that he was telling me the truth. That was in 1985 in New Orleans, LA.
I left New Orleans a few days later, headed back North. I never returned. Today, I am retired and live in Cozumel, Mexico. I live here because I feel a freedom that I never could enjoy in America. I have not renounced my American citizenship, but for what it is worth, I never thought that I was a citizen of the United States to began with.
I cried because I am finally seeing the possibility of genuine change occurring in America. The mere thought that a Black man could get this far in a Presidentail race is incredibly surreal.
Rod Davis, Cozumel, MX
