Dear cousin Chris,

Remember that conversation we had about ten years ago — you know, the one in your grandmother’s kitchen? I think you were seven or eight at the time. I had just graduated from college. My dad (your mom’s first cousin) was there too.

I don’t remember why the subject came up. But I do remember that you, with your 8-year-old earnestness, asked “Will there ever be a black president?” Do you remember that?

I remember we took a while to answer you. We were all trying to decide whether to tell you what we really thought, or tell you what you should tell an eight year old about his own possibility for greatness.

Your grandmother and my dad (his aunt) grew up in the segregated South. They remembered “colored” signs on rest rooms and water fountains. They remembered packing food on road trips to New York and Baltimore because they wouldn’t be able to find a restaurant that served Negroes until they got north of Virginia. My dad remembers being called a ‘nigger’ on more than one occasion both in South Carolina and Long Island, New York. Their cynicism was deeply shaped by lived experience.

I, on the other hand, had just finished four years of college. What little lefty, wide-eyed idealism I had was beat out of me by all of those electives I took about “intersecting oppressions,” “structural racism” and “cultural imperialism.” I had never been called a nigger to my face — though some of my black friends who grew up in white, northeastern neighborhoods had — but I was starting to feel and notice the impact of racism as a cultural belief. My cynicism was young, but still there.

So when you asked the question, we all thought about how to answer. Do we give you the answer that’s drenched in some unhealthy mix of cynicism and pragmatism? Or do we give you the answer that you should give an 8-year-old who is still able to dream big?

After what seemed like an eternity, your grandmother finally said, “Yes Chris. There will be a black president someday. It probably won’t happen in my life time. But it will in yours.”

I’m not sure any of us fully believed her answer at the time. And, no, she didn’t live to see it. But she was right about us seeing it.

Amazing isn’t it?

Love, Tiffany