Bigotry in the Bedroom

I saw a commercial today featuring an interracial couple engaging in pillow talk regarding their daughter considering a military career. I was suddenly a little girl racing to the kitchen to tell my mother that I had just seen something I had never seen before -- a black woman in a commercial. I confess that I am old enough to remember a much whiter world than the one in which we live today and how the common sight of people of color was not as prevalent as it finally is. It was not my doing anymore than it was my choice, but I am somehow embarrassed by it having been so accepted by so many for so long. I don't remember what was being advertised in that ad so many years ago and I may not remember today's couple was discussing anything as important as their child's future in years to come, but they were a black man in bed with a white woman and that smacks of bravery on the part of the people who casted that commercial. My daughter was in the room when it aired and unlike the little girl her mother was, she thought nothing of it. In the bigoted society in which we live, that fact alone makes me proud of the way I've raised my children, teaching them from birth that different is neither better nor worse -- only different. The commercial itself made me laugh to think of the racists who saw it and began screaming their racial epithets to fewer people than used to listen to them. Perhaps their screams were out of anger and hatred alone, but I like to think that it was also out of fear as they realized their way of thinking is finally on the way out.