Growing pains

When I heard that African-Americans had been ostracized by white acquaintances in Wichita and around the country after Barack Obama won the Nov. 4 election, I was surprised and disappointed.

I shouldn’t have been, if history is any indication.

There’s an old saying that the armies went home after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in April of 1865, but the Civil War didn’t end for another 100 years.

Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, former slaves and their descendants endured a society that continued to enslave them through discrimination, legislation and intimidation.

It was as if culture picked up the fight when the Confederate army laid down its arms. Jim Crow laws and the KKK were cruel rebuttals to any claims that the “War Between the States” was actually about states’ rights. If slavery wasn’t the primary issue, why did so many work so hard for so long to forge new chains in place of the ones that Lincoln had cast off?

America has shed forever any notions of a “ceiling” for minorities with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. That’s an important milestone for a nation that has long claimed – but too often not lived up to – the belief that “all men are created equal.” The fact that Hillary Clinton was Obama’s stiffest opponent in the primary race should shatter any gender barriers as well.

It’s a sign that this still-young nation is indeed growing up.

But the “punishment” African-Americans have endured following the election shows we aren’t there yet.

Consider them growing pains for a nation making important strides.