SOUNDING OFF:

After an unprecedented victory in last year’s election and a historic presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, Barack Obama’s first address to both houses of Congress can also be recorded as memorable.

The president delivered another powerful speech conveying a patriotic and a unifying message to captivate Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

But that wasn’t it. The magical moment traveled around the world through the Internet and moved mountains without even showcasing a Martin Luther King-like speech. It was that vivid picture of President Obama standing up in front of the presidential podium, and Vice President Joe Biden as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cheering and clapping behind him that caught the world’s attention.

They conveyed a powerful image that we, as a nation, have walked miles away from our terrifying past of segregation and gender discrimination. We haven’t turned the page yet, but that image of Obama receiving a standing ovation or Pelosi seating behind him holding the gavel is priceless.

They are poignant reminders of how much our social fabric has changed since the 1954 Supreme Court decision with Brown v. Board of Education.

We should pat ourselves for achieving a greater degree of diversity, multiculturalism and, why not, tolerance.

In retrospect, those changes didn’t happen by way of default or out of a political accident. They are rather the result of a strenuous work of people who rolled up their sleeves, worked collectively in their own communities to push for civil and individual rights, to end discrimination, and to fight, above all, for a more inclusive system.

And so it happens that politicians in many California cities today, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods like in Los Angeles and Costa Mesa, now must show a sense of maturity in terms of understanding gender- and ethnic-related issues.

However, not everyone is happy. A few days ago, at the Oscar ceremony, Sean Penn expressed a few scathing remarks against those who supported Proposition 8, and implicitly suggested that “we” continue to violate the civil rights of some minority groups, namely gay people.

Penn is absolutely correct. We aren’t yet a completely tolerant society. Nonetheless we are better off today than ever before. His now highly acclaimed motion picture “Milk,” for which he won an Oscar, wouldn’t have had a chance at the box office 10 years ago. Today, the gender gap is also shrinking.

I think we are climbing up the mountain little by little. Obama, Biden and Pelosi have just showed us that we’re headed in the right direction.

HUMBERTO CASPA is a resident of Costa Mesa.