It is the last day of Black History Month—and our series "Black History in Cascade"—but a first for my brother, Brian, and the other African-Americans who were among the 200 people who filled the White House East Room last Thursday evening for a Motown tribute.

Though President Barack Obama was elected more than two years ago, the black guests were experiencing something that still seems fabled today: real networking and mingling with a black American president and his dignitaries. 

For many whites in America, it may seem odd to make a big deal over networking. But, honestly, one crux of the concept of racism is that, consciously or not, the racial group in power keeps true wealth and power away from the oppressed.

Until Obama's election, I, like many people of African descent, have always seen the ceiling above which only white people lingered; I've always known that concepts like "blue blood" and "country club set" did not—and could not—apply to people like me.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, middle-class black folks in Cascade Heights knew their place—and it definitely was not in the White House. The Oval Office was reserved for white males and we all knew (or thought we knew) that neither a black man nor a woman would ever become President of the United States.

No. Our place as the black, middle-class—ironically, priviledged in contrast to most African-Americans—was as Corporate America's affirmative action hire. We would get in the door, get labeled "a quota," and get a good paycheck to take back home to the 'hood. It was that, or the original post-slavery, "talented tenth" route: work as the neighborhood doctor, HBCU professor or funeral home owner.

But those times are passing and things are changing. There are fundamental shifts occurring in U.S. and world politics. 

In the Internet era, people who have lived as second-class citizens are no longer accepting "their place." Egyptians have ousted a 30-year ruler, Libyans are uprising and, in the United States, as conservatives scramble to rebuild a power base, a second Obama term seems on the horizon.

Which brings me to the pictures above, which I am sharing with you now, including the jpeg file that brought tears eyes last year the moment I opened it and saw my brother, a fortunate black kid who came of age in the 1970s in Cascade Heights, who became an attorney, standing next to another fortunate black kid who came of age in the same era, who became an attorney and, on Nov. 4, 2008, the 44th President of the United States of America.

Of course, we of the African diaspora still have a long way to go. My brother is a fortunate black man and so is our president. But too many are struggling and more, even, lost.

This end of this Black History Month is one to celebrate, however, because the images on this page—and around the world–signal a change is coming.