Thank You Mr. President!

I can't imagine how it feels to want to champion for the people and also be enemy #1 for those same people. I can't imagine what it must be like to be under constant scrutiny for every move you make, subjected to daily criticism, be labeled with racial slurs and likened to animals, have your wife and children degraded all while running a country and never lashing out or completely losing your cool. But that is exactly what you have managed to eloquently endure for the past 8 years.

Before you even had an opportunity to make a mistake or a misstep, people were against you from election night. "But I'm not racist", they said. Then they could offer no logic or policy or fundamental belief why they weren't willing to give you a chance. Now their "give him a chance" pleas fall on my deaf ears.

I've watched you deliver a Presidential address only to be met with disrespectful remarks and applause at inappropriate times. I've seen your very named mocked and slandered. You've held your head up high even when being booed and you gracefully encouraged protestors to voice their opinions even if it didn't match your own.

You see Mr. President, you have proven to be a bigger and better person than me time and time again. You have demonstrated that no matter what comes your way, there are some things that simply can't be taken from you; an education, intelligence, class, humility, grace and most importantly....a legacy.

I NEVER imagined the depths of hate that the first African-American President would face but I always knew it would exist. I see it daily on social media, in public, at work. It's painfully there....perhaps it will always be there.

So I'm mentally prepared for those catty remarks tomorrow and applause that you are leaving. Those same people never acknowledging that they actually survived the past eight years without their guns being taken, arms being microchipped, stripped of their bibles and escaping martial law. Hell, they probably don't even know where THEIR birth certificates are!

I simply want to say THANK YOU. Thank you for being a pure example of a leader. You faced your critics with backbone and the absence of juvenile tweets. You were someone to look up to. You gave brown children a tangible aspiration.

All my life, I would look at walls and walls of great men in museums and secretly wonder are there any men who look like my father who have reached this level of greatness? And the answer has always been "yes"; they just haven't been on a world stage. Take a bow Mr. President. Job remarkably done.