A. Serwer of TAPPED rings the bell with this beautiful passage beginning with an anecdote about his brother’s first experience in summer camp.

When it came time to go swimming, my brother was promptly informed by one of the other kids that black people couldn’t swim.

Of course, bougie as we are, my brother had been taking swim lessons for years, and he swam circles around this kid just to prove the point. It was a formative experience for my brother, who realized his personal excellence would speak louder than anything anyone could say about the color of his skin.

Since Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, and shortly after Barack Obama started running for president, we started hearing some identity-specific variations of what that obnoxious kid told my brother before he got a mouthful of chlorine wake. As an incessant reminder that women don’t belong in positions of authority, Pelosi was attacked as a “man“ or peppered with criticisms of her looks or suggestions that she needed to be home doing domestic work. Obama’s intelligence provoked an existential crisis for some conservatives, who insisted he didn’t write his autobiography or legal work or he got into Harvard or even was elected president because of affirmative action.

The passage of yesterday’s health care bill isn’t due to the efforts of just one person. But it’s fair to say that the health care reform bill could not have passed the House without the political skills of the first female speaker of the house and the first black president of the United States. Conservatives won’t abandon the use of tribalist and sexist attacks against them, but these will recede into the fog of history, in which the relative diversity of the Democratic leadership at this moment speaks louder than words can say about the stubborn leftover myths from America’s past.

He said it here.

It’s not that sexism or homophobia or racism is dead (um, for instance no.) Nor is it the case that society’s gone all color- and gender-blind. (Also no.) And I expect I’ll be long after my time before anyone can say honestly and accurately say “nothing more need be done.”

But just as it would be foolish for anyone to rest on their laurels it would also be a huge mistake to deny that laurels have been deservedly won. The first and either second or third* most powerful politicians in government right now are not now and never will be dead white males. And in the face of amazing and incredibly procedural conservative opposition on the one hand, and unbelievable progressive timidity on the other, they’ve pulled together vote after vote on bill after bill.

If you’re not old enough to remember, say, the Johnson or Nixon administrations, when civil rights and women’s rights were entire novelties last night’s HCR vote, and tomorrow’s signing ceremony, might feel somewhere between water under the bridge and/or a major disappointment. That in itself is a measure of how far it’s possible to go in just a handful of decades!

I’ll repeat, while it’s important not to rest on one’s laurels it’s also bloody important to acknowledge when laurels have been won. And not so you can say “whew, I’m just sooooo grateful.” Not at all, at all. But so we can look for the next big hill, grin like a little kid, and say “again, again!”

* Depending on whether you consider Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader most significant.