(January 20, 2009) When I was six, I went to the Cedar Lane Elementary School in Vienna, Va. I had no idea that there were children of other colors and nationalities. Immigration was headed to an all time low of 3%. The black kids went to a school called Louise Archer.

I didn’t do so well at Cedar Lane. By the time I hit the third grade, I was shipped to Our Lady of Good Counsel, the local Catholic School. In my class were a couple of black kids. I had no idea that there was a difference. I had no idea that the public schools in Virginia were still segregated. Politics and social constructs are very far away when you are nine.

I remember that my Dad started going door to door with another man to talk about Fair Housing. Dad was a liberal who lived by his principles (and a naval pilot for about ten years). I think his friend’s name was Joe Carter. They went door to door, a black guy and my very white Dad to educate the community. I’m pretty sure that Dad met Mr. Carter through the church. In those days, the Catholic Church had a heavy emphasis on social justice and community organizing.

For a while worked at the Labor Department as an auditor for Equal Employment practices under the Civil Rights act. He travelled heavily in the south helping people adjust to the new regime that was ushered in as a part of Johnson’s Great Society.

When I was 11 or 12, I started volunteering as an aide in the local Head Start program. It was never about race, it was about sharing my good fortune with people who were less fortunate. No one ever told me that race and poverty were linked.  It just so happened that the kids in the head start program were predominantly black.

Later, my mother became a Head Start teacher and worked at the boundary between the classes for most of her adult life. She was a teacher, a counselor, a dietician, a health monitor, a cultural translator and an advocate for the disadvantaged within the government support system.

The movie “Remember the Titans“, about the desegregation of Virginia High School Football, is based on events at my high school during my junior year.. Among the kids, there was  little awareness of the issue. Among the parents, it was a big thing. The schools had been desegregated and we just didn’t know any different.

I ran a runaway house in deepest downtown Washington, DC during college. In those days, children were still considered property by law. A parent was entitled to retrieve his or her child regardless of the level of abuse at home. We had a kid-friendly underground railroad that allowed competent kids to escape dangerous living circumstances. All of the clients were from poor families (rich kids have other alternatives).

I really first encountered discrimination in my late 20s. After a wonderful career as a college radical, I took a job as an engineer in the Defense Industry. There was no whiter world. Although I travelled heavily with black professionals, they were clearly tokens, clearly in the minority and clearly troubled by their experiences. The defense industry of that era had no ethnic diversity, no meaningful complement of female workers and certainly no observable group with an alternative sexual lifestyle.

Upscale discrimination is tougher than the more overt stuff practiced in some
rural parts of our country today. Upscale discrimination involves smiles, pats on the backs, good wishes and no action. It doesn’t involve system wide equal treatment or opportunity. It can only be seen from a system level.

As a young adult, I lent a hand to the outsiders in every organization for whom I worked. I moved my family into the black neighborhood of a sleepy little town. I tried to follow my Dad’s lead. It always seemed like swimming upstream. It never seemed like it made a difference.

I operated a plant in rural Georgia for a while. As we were getting ready to open the facility, I took a group of colleagues and customers for a drive in the country one night. (Okay, I was really lost but that’s when I give my best tours.) We were listening to the only radio station on at that time of night. We all started singing along to an old Hank Williams tune. From the backseat came this delicious harmony.

It was my friend Bill, a black man, who had been born in Macon and sat through the rehearsals of the dream speech. I said something like, “But Bill, black people hate country music.” He told me that, like me, you love what you live and you are never really aware of the bigger picture. Ultimately, he ran that plant and was happy to move back to the south where, at least, you knew who was discriminating against you and what the rules were.

I raised my kids to take the side of the underdog, reach out to the less fortunate and to give before they receive. They have all grown to be the kind of friend that you’d love to have. They have made a real difference in the lives of the people they meet.

I tell you all of this because I cried today during the inauguration.

I was a reluctant supporter of Barrack Obama. My vote was against George Bush and the wretched policies and practices of the past decade. I have not, until this morning, shared the sense of hope and renewal that I’ve heard people talking about.

And then, I saw what happened. I saw Martin King’s dream realized. I saw the work of generations of my family paying off. I saw history. I saw that the American idea hibernates sometimes and then comes out with a vengeance in the new spring.

I watched the inauguration with many of my friends and chatted about it on the CNN-Facebook experiment. I have little idea about their various colors, I long ago stopped noticing. We entered a new era in which you consume media intimately with your friends. It’s a time in which seeds planted by smart investors 45 years ago are bearing fruit.

I am lucky to be living this dream with you.