About three years ago, I had to take my parents to the airport. While heading there, along with one of their friends, they started talking about life in the 50s and 60s. My father talked about how, as a young Navy recruit, he was heading back home on leave. He was in a bus with a bunch of other recruits. The blacks were in the back of the bus and the whites were in the front. They stopped at a diner. The white recruits went into the diner, got silverware, ceramic plates and coffee cups for their meal. The black recruits had to sit outside at the back of the diner, where there were picnic tables set up. They got paper plates, plastic utensils and Styrofoam cups for their meal.

I never heard my father tell a story like that and their friend, who was older than my parents by ten years, kind of nodded in agreement, relaying his own story about segregation.

When we hear stories from that time in our history, we always get the dramatic images; children blown up in churches, water hoses and barking dogs attacking black people. It puts into our heads that the racism is of a time and place that doesn't exist anymore, because what we are constantly reminded of is so over the top. We forget about the subtle things racism brought; those little things we would dismiss as slights or oversights but those little things piled onto the perception many have about minorities in this country.

When I was about ten, I think, I remember our school had an IQ test. I took the IQ test and a few weeks later I had to take another IQ test. I didn't learn until two years later that the reason I had to take two tests was because it was assumed, because I was black, that the high score I got on the first test was a mistake. Soon after that I had a chance to get promoted two grades, because I was well past my fellow students. On the advice of a black teacher to my mother, I wasn't promoted the two grades. I found that out three years after the fact.

When Obama first started his bid for the Presidency, he didn't have much support in the black community. Despite the revisionist history some are putting out, Obama, to many in the black community, wasn't black enough to be a black President. Others were concerned white America wouldn't accept a black President. It wasn't until the big win in Iowa did blacks begin to realize he could be President, then all of a sudden white Americans thought of Obama as a black candidate, because of the support of black people.

It's hard to believe there are people still alive today, like my parents, who had to face real hard racism. Separate water fountains, not being able to sit at lunch counters; this isn't ancient history to them. People like me remember being bused to all white schools or being denied simple things that would have been afforded to others of a different color. The thing is, racism isn't just white people on blacks. We do enough damage to ourselves, because of our own fears and prejudices. My parents left California to South Carolina mainly because they wanted to be around more black people. They didn't like the Hispanic population getting into all aspects of society. Of course, they're facing the same thing in South Carolina.

We have changed a lot over the years, but it’s still odd to think that in less that a week millions of Americans will go to the polls and there is a distinct possibility a black man will be our next President. Going from separate but equal, from separate lunch counters and sitting in the back of the bus to having a black man as President in less than 50 years is something we all should be proud of. Having him, if he becomes President, won't solve all our racial issues, but it will be a historic time and something to talk about for decades to come.