July 5, 2011

Jim Estrin’s Fourth of July Photo

By Michael Shaw

If we can step back for a moment from all the fingernail-on-the-chalkboard political and culture battling and backbiting, I’d like to admire Jim Estrin’s photo on the front page of Tuesday’s print NYT. It shows a boy getting a last minute once-over from his father on a Fourth of July float in New Jersey.  What the caption doesn’t say, but the image speaks to eloquently, three years into the term of America’s 44th president, is a reality that has comes to take hold….  Today, any black child (at least a male) might hope to become the President of the United States as unblinkingly as the next kid would dream of becoming a fireman.