As barriers fall, liberty remains elusive for some

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By Editorial Board, November 7, 2008

On Tuesday night, President-elect Barack Obama reminded us that even when the road is long and the climb is steep, in America, all things are possible.
 

“The true genius of America,” Obama said, “[is] that America can change.”
 

We should hope so.
 

Obama’s victory shattered the vestiges of the nation’s deepest sin and darkest stain. But while Election Day struck a blow to bigotry in the guise of racism, hatred exists in many forms, and the fight for civil rights must be fought on many fronts.
 

Women still face the burden of a glass ceiling, in a country where legislation mandating equal pay for an equal day’s work still hasn’t passed.
 

Millions of Californians who went to the polls to support Obama also voted to restrict the liberties of homosexuals, choosing instead to write inequality into the state’s constitution by denying the right to marriage to partners every bit as devoted as heterosexual couples.

Xenophobia pervades the national immigration debate.
 

And while Obama proved a black person can be elected president, high portions of black youths still grow up in violent neighborhoods, attend dilapidated schools and live in environments that foster the same plagues that spurred Obama in his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech to decry the “slander that says a black kid with a book is acting white.”
 

Add to that the struggles of those who work low-paying jobs and are forced to choose between seeing a doctor and paying rent, and our challenges remain daunting.
 

Voters took a huge step toward real equality in America by selecting Obama, neither because he’s black, nor in spite of his ethnicity, but because he’s best suited to meet the challenges of today.
 

But America is built on the fundamental idea that we are our brothers’ keepers – that if one of us is judged by unfair criteria, it’s offensive to us all.