The Democratic Primaries are over

And I am glad. Ideologically, I found Obama and Clinton to be pretty much the same candidate. [My instinct here is to refer to her as Hillary, but I get annoyed when people refer to Barak more formally but are informal with Clinton. I am not sure if it is because she is a woman or because we already have a Clinton and so we don’t want to get the names confused.] On the issues I am in agreement, they hold the same views. On the issues I didn’t agree with them, again, I didn’t agree with either of them.

As a Black Woman however, I was torn. Did I want a Black man (possibly the first Black US president) or a Woman (again, possibly the first female US president).

As an African Woman who is alum of a women’s college, I was even further torn. Of course, I wanted to support the African man who could by some simple (really, most Africans are related by only four degrees) extensions be my uncle/cousin. Even though we are from different countries and more importantly different ethnic groups, you know Africans are all really family. You know, the reason why every time I tell anyone where I am from, they feel the need to tell me about that friend from Madagascar or some other African country. [And no, that’s not where I come from, not even close. Of course I know them. Their grandmother and mine often picked firewood from the same spot.] So I was really rooting for Obama.

But then again, there is nothing stronger than the bond between daughters of the Seven Sisters. Being that I attended the oldest sister and Clinton went to Wellesley (maybe some day I will blog about how Wellesley is the one school I really wanted to get into for college and didn’t.) This seven sisters bond transcends age, backgrounds, location or political ideology. I can’t count how many times I have met another product of the seven sisters (not necessarily from the one I went to) and how we immediately have so much in common. Sometimes more in common than with other women/people I have known for several years. It is a really special thing that cannot be explained.

And so with all this turmoil, I am really glad I didn’t get a chance to choose between the two. You can’t imagine how hard that would have been.