The filming on Tuesday [of the inauguration in detail] wasn't about illusion or manufacture, however: the intimacy was real and in real time. Anybody watching the footage surrounding the oath will have felt closely acquainted with the Obamas: they laugh with each other, they sometimes look as if they are going to have a giggling fit, sometimes she rolls her eyes and then stops herself, sometimes he suppresses a yawn. She kicks off her tight new shoes, like we do when we sit down at weddings; he goofs around with his children, like a normal person. They are immediately familiar, recognisably human, like us (which means that, cleverly, the colour of their skin becomes irrelevant).
So, even in gesture and simple acts, the new first family helps us transcend the old patterns in which what was familiar was based on race and introduces us to a new world in which what is familiar is based on humanity.
As Rikkity says: We can all make it if we focus on connections, not difference!
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