Representin' For the Seat Where Rosa Parks Sat

I gotta ride with Lupe on this one. The thing that I'll remember most from Tuesday night is seeing Jesse Jackson weep after the election was called for Obama. From witnessing the assassination of Martin Luther King to watching as, 40 years later, a black man gets elected president, it's easy to see why Rev. Jackson got so emotional.

There are three over-riding thoughts that I keep having about President-elect Obama.

One, it's truly amazing that we have a president that we believe in. Walking past a deli in Brooklyn the other night, I saw a framed photo of President Obama in the window and it really hit me. We have a leader whose face we actually want to see. We want to hear him speak, we're proud of him and we want to show him off to the rest of the world. When he makes his first state visits to Europe and Africa, it'll really be clear how much of a global icon he is. I don't think the U.S. has ever had a leader like that.

Two, it's absolutely beautiful that young black kids can, now, really believe that they can be anything they want to be. There are truly no barriers anymore for anyone. It's a new epoch in the U.S. In a generation or two, whites will be the minority in any case, but this really jump-started that party. From going through an endless supply of WASPs broken only by JFK to electing a Hawaiian with a Kenyan father who grew up party in Indonesia, it's pretty staggering. America has finally woken up.

Three, Obama has a huge-ass task in front of him. I remember reading a Busta Rhymes interview from a few years ago, before Obama even had a national profile, where he suggested that the next president would be black. He pointed to Deep Impact, which featured a black president and said that things are way too messed-up now and a black guy is destined to take over and clean it up. Obama finds himself in that exact situation and he'll be scrutinized to no end. He has to be pretty much perfect or there could be a serious backlash by 2012.

These are just my thoughts, people.