Faculty & Staff Reflections
Reflections On The Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama
By Curtiss Takada Rooks, Ph.D.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me"
As I watched and listened on to the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama on Tuesday morning I remembered that rhyme from my childhood days – “sticks and stones…” It kept playing over and over in my head. During that childhood parents, teachers and other grown-ups gave this tool to me to deflect the WORDS so that I could some how endure the taunts from Whites and as a multiracial person, Blacks and Asians as well. But the incantation did not really work because WORDS did HURT and on occasion my response was to hurt back (including at times physically, which ended in my punishment, particularly at school).
Watching Barack Hussein Obama, his family, his sister, and the all of the folks in the background, I began to dream that I would not have to arm my child or her children with that or any other rhyme to deflect the hurtful power of WORDS directed at her for the body she was born into.
President Obama, like Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded me that words can also heal, and words can also challenge. WORDS ARE POWERFUL and can be used for good. Words are so power that for many years my African descent ancestors were legally forbid from learning to read lest it inspire in them the action for inclusion. Yet, despite the prohibitions, threats and violence that accompanied, we did and do aspire to WORDS that challenge, WORDS that change and WORDS that heal so that we do not need sticks (bullets) and stones (bombs, napalm and radiation).
With the work of everyday people, we elected Barack Hussein Obama to the highest office in the land and arguably the most powerful position in the world as we believed in his WORDS, his call to service, his call to action. President Obama’s election serves as a deposit to make solvent the "check" that came back "insufficient funds" (MLK I Have A Dream Speech) so many times in the past. Now for US comes the work, perseverance and wisdom needed to "spend those funds" wisely so that justice can "flow like water" and no child need ever learn this rhyme…so help me God.
(Not to be reprinted without permission of the author)