I have a dream

This morning from my luscious bed office I pulled out an idea journal I keep in this messy pile of bedside books. Surprising me was this quote by Walt Whitman, one I wrote down after reading Lois Palken Rudnick's book, Utopian Vistas : The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture.

"We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake."

In light of our electing the first African American President of the United States, do you think that we are, as Americans, more than 100 years after he wrote this, finally seeing? How hopeful this feels.