The significance is impossible to ignore. Eighty years after the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., the nation Dr. King lived and died to create will inaugurate Barack H. Obama as its president. We are a different America than we were back when Dr. King was born and that is reason enough to celebrate.

When I visited the D.C. area a few weeks ago, it looked like the Obama celebration had already started. I couldn’t even buy a metro ticket without seeing the President-elect’s picture on it. As a Republican, this should have bothered me. It should have been a reminder of a failed election effort, but I was surprisingly not all that bothered.

Seeing Obama’s face every where is the clearest reminder that he’s not like the 43 men who preceded him. Seeing white Americans buy t-shirts with a photo of the future first family, the first black family to be the first family, was an excellent example of America’s evolving attitudes on race. I wondered if the street-vendors that sold the t-shirts, many of them speaking with foreign accents, were thinking that one day their children could grow up to be on those t-shirts. A t-shirt with the faces of Dr. King and President-Elect Obama even stated that “The dream came true.” It sure looked that way, but has it really?

For minority Republicans like me, the pride is bittersweet at best. My guy lost. My ideas lost. Why should I be proud? Well, the fact that a “non-Anglo,” “multi-cultural” “minority,” or whatever you want to call it, was elected to lead a diverse country with so little history of diversity in the ruling the class is significant. The fact that my eight-year-old cousin’s declaration that he will one day be president is not just cute but is now within the realm of possibility, that is reason enough to be proud.

It’s safe to say Dr.King and Abraham Lincoln would be proud, even if they were Republicans. I remember watching Tara Wall, a black conservative and CNN commentator, on Election Night once it was obvious history would be made. She was her trying to balance her pride in her heritage with her political disagreements with the winning candidate. Although we don’t share a heritage we do share the feeling of bitter-sweetness she expressed.

Even for us in the loyal opposition who are worried of how much are government will grow after the January 20th, the day should still be acknowledged as a tremendous day in our nation’s history. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The dream is nowhere near realized. If Dr. King wanted us to be judged not be the color of our skin but by the content of our character, and I, as well as many other Americans, am proud of Obama’s inauguration simply because of the color of his skin, then the dream can’t be completed. I am not saying it is wrong to be proud of Obama for being the first black man elected president, but the fact that this is still something to be proud of means we still got work to do before we fulfill Dr. King’s dream.

The day black men, or Jewish women, or Hindus, or Hispanics get elected and we don’t even think to mention it was a great achievement simply because of they looked like or what God they worshiped, that is the day we can say the dream came true. It is not the day we ignore race, it is the day race doesn’t define us and we don’t use race to define others.

Racism will not end on January 20th. America’s original sin of slavery will not be cleared from our memory either. We as Republicans need to recognize the significance of what the other party has accomplished and we need to do our part to ensure our country continues towards achieving Dr. King’s dream. On January 20th we should celebrate that we are one step close to realizing Dr. King’s dream, but we as Americans need to all admit we have a ways to go.

Last 5 posts by Abel S. Delgado

• Let’s Support the Cantwell-McCain Bill - January 6th, 2010
• Deeds Gets Dirty, Doesn’t Win Anyway - November 2nd, 2009
• Obama & The Berlin Wall - October 25th, 2009
• The Nobel Prom King - October 11th, 2009
• Bureaucratizing Interrogations a Horrible Idea - August 28th, 2009