The best man won.

This is a great day for America, who responds to 8 years of the self-inflicted Bush disaster in emphatic fashion, by electing the first African-American President of the United States of America.

This is a great day for the world, as the world’s most powerful nation has shown that it is willing to move in a new, more positive, more progressive direction.

We can only hope that President Barack Obama will fulfill the promise of his campaign, which has inspired millions of Americans, Africans, and others around the world.

As a black man, I am personally inspired. Barack Obama has inspired me to be better, smarter, more determined, more hardworking.

I hope other black boys and men are inspired. I hope his example causes black boys and men, and the communities that raise and shape them to look less to hip-hop music for role models, careers, and ways of moving in the world. I hope his example will finally force us to look to lawyers, community organizers, public servants, teachers, engineers and other professionals, and most importantly heads of households for inspiration.

For a long time, I have said that it is so much more difficult to create than to destroy. We must aspire to create great things to be great. It is the builders and creators that we need more than anything. I hope Barack Obama’s election inspires us to build. We must build the world we want to live in. It will not magically appear, we must build it.

Africans are the original builders and creators of civilization. Ancient Egypt was created by black Africans, and was one of the first civilizations on Earth, if not the first. In Ancient Egypt, Africa gave the world advances in food production, in medicine, in philosophy, and spirituality. Africa’s contributions to civilization and humanity continued throughout human history until this was interrupted in the last 500 years, with the devastating tragedy of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, and state-directed white supremacy. The modern world in which we live having been created in this period, which coincided with the rise of Europe and the central positioning of its history, along with the de-emphasis and distortion of African history, Africa’s great history is often ignored. Africa’s subjection looms large, when in fact Africa’s subject was a temporary departure, and in historical terms a relatively short departure from a long history of dynamic civilization. Let this great step symbolize a closing of a terrible chapter in African history. Africans must now give meaning to the rebirth spoken of in the phrase ‘African Renaissance’, and redouble their efforts in their historic task, which is to build a dynamic, prosperous, peaceful Africa. Africa must be a place for Africans to fulfill their best potential. Let the next great African president rise in Africa.