Governor Sarah Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live may have seemed like frivolous fun, but it marked an important milestone in presidential history.

Sarahcuda’s got mad rhythm.

In an election year that breaks all moulds and barriers, when for the first time in American History either a black man or a white woman will be in the White House, Palin’s appearance on the show speaks volumes about the true progress of race relations in our country. 

Governor Palin didn’t just learn how to bounce like that during rehearsal for America’s most celebrated Cultural Mainstay on television.  No.  Sarah Palin has been bouncin’ like that for a while.  It is quite apparent that the Governor knows first-hand what the rest of us on "main street" have known for quite some time–  whites and blacks in America get along just fine, thank you very much.  We work together, we learn together, we succeed together, we fail together, we play together, and yes, we dance together too.

To the race baiters and haters, men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who want America to believe that this is a country divided, that this is a country where white people keep black people down, that whites want to disenfranchise black folks from voting, that this presidential election is about race, here’s a great big news flash: Hip Hop has won the White House.

McCain once said that one of his favorite artists is Usher.  Palin is so comfortable with Hip Hop sound that America might be a bit surprised at what she has on her i-Pod.  Obama, not withstanding his genius, owes his rise to power in large part to the unifying effect of Hip-Hop music on a once divided nation. 

From the Negro Spiritual, to Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap, to Hip-Hop, racial unity in America has been forged, not by university elites, or politicians, but rather by club-goers and artists inspired on some basic level by the noble and transcendent sentiments expressed by the ancestors in song and rhythm and prayer.

And we may finally be realizing a very important lesson as a nation.  It has never been, in all of human history, the offenders that achieve reconciliation, peace, and forgiveness.  The history of humanity bears forth that those who have offended, as we have offended so many years ago in the sin of slavery, can never succeed alone in fixing the damage done no matter how contrite, how sorry, or how badly we want to turn back the clock.  In the great nations of the world, it has always been the offended, those who have sufferred under the impervious actions of others, that have been key to healing their nations.  From India’s caste system, to South Africa’s apartheid, to America’s slavery, it has taken those who have sufferred the most to forge a new future built on reconciliation, love, and forgiveness.

And anyone who has been to a Hip Hop club on Main Street knows that real, regular, average Americans love and respect each other, red and yellow, black and white.

And so this election, there is no need to vote for Obama because he’s black, or for Palin because she’s a woman.  There’s no need to vote against McCain because he’s older, or Obama because he "doesn’t look like those other presidents on the dollar bill."  Americans can vote on the issues- like national security, the economy, taxes, and education- knowing that whatever happens this election, for the first time in Presidential history, the new occupants of the Oval Office will be moving to a new rhythm.

Hip Hop has won the White House.