My god, that’s an articulate black man. Clean too. Seriously though, I just read Obama’s speech as reprinted at the New York Times. It is incredibly good, and it does a lot of things. First and foremost, I think it takes the energy generated by the Jeremiah Wright story, and uses it for his own purposes. Sort of a judo move. He uses it to wax eloquent about his religion — talking about how his church taught him to identify the stories of ordinary black people with “the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope” became their stories.
This isn’t particularly impressive to me as a person who isn’t religious. But it strikes me as powerful language for those who want a leader with a Christian faith. It jams up the assholes who, for political gain, want to perpetuate the idea that Obama is a Muslim. Then, while unequivocally rejecting the crackpot stuff that came from pastor Wright, he describes the good and the bad of the man and the Church. Unsurprisingly, the man is more complicated than the caricature painted by right wing commentators and cable news. The Church and the pastor are like family; and family is complicated — you don’t disown family, even when they say crazy or offensive stuff.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
From there, he goes on to speak insightfully about the current state of race in America, as viewed by black and white; how we got here; and the effect the past has on the present.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.†This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
Obama is using the energy ginned up by this controversy and turning it against those who gain most by stoking it. He does this by identifying the gamesmen playing gotcha politics, never rising above horse race political commentary, and substituting one irrelevant spectacle after another for substantive political discussion as primary obstructions to fixing the things everyone knows are broken. And, most effectively, he does this by illustrating the substantive problems rather than simply complaining about the content-free punditry.
I encourage you to read the whole thing. To some extent, I’ve done what Obama warns against — summarizing the speech in terms of the ebb and flow of the political campaign, rather than capturing his larger point about the vast potential this country has. However, in my defense, he makes his point far better than I could.
Update Video of the speech:
Good speech. I look forward to “Not this Time” cadences at his next rally.
“Yes we can” was getting a little tiring.
I like how he brought up Geraldine Ferraro. Hillary threw her under the bus. The difference is that Obama is willing to live with the tension his pastor created; and call out the things he disagrees with.
Guess he negates any bump that Hillary got from the controversy.
Ace in the hole. This speech should go in the history books. This candidacy should (and will) go in the history books. This was one of the most “presidential” speeches I have ever heard a candidate give in my life, if not THE most. It challenges every American to be better, from top-down and bottom-up. He didn’t dance around issues as most politicians and people in the public light do. If you didn’t feel challenged to be a better American after listening to this speech, you were not paying attention.
Great post, Doug.
I too appreciated the Geraldine Ferraro reference. She indeed said something racist and divisive but that’s not the general tenor and thrust of her life and activities. She was rightfully criticized but she shouldnt be dumped into the same category as Bull Conner…
Pretty comprehensive statement.
Style point: Put a teleprompter to the front and look at the camera, Mr. Obama. The target audience of this speech isn’t in that room.
Good speech.
What I like most about Obama is that he at least mentions the arguments of the other side. He does so not in a derogatory manner, but in a way that shows that he has respect for the argument, even if he doesn’t agree with it.
For example:
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
When’s the last time that you heard a Democrat say something like that? Wow!
The paragraphs following the one I referenced are also very, very good.
Unfortunately, I think the content in the speech is all bogus. This is the first time he’s talked openly about racial reconciliation. Why hasn’t he spoken in this manner before? Why hasn’t he talked in this way with Wright and his congregation? With others in the black community?
I guess I will hold off final judgement to see if he repeats the themes of this speech in the coming days and weeks.
Howard Dean had similar themes, such as working whites and blacks having more in common than not, during his campaign. His brief campaign where most of the press focused on process rather than content.
I think Obama’s convention speech had a similar tone, didn’t it?
Almost no politician ever has so comprehensively addressed the issue, Buzzcut. I suppose the burden is on Obama to do so, because his minister said what he said. But other than Bobby Kennedy, I can’t think of a politician who came across as genuine addressing this theme.
You’re right about him giving an airing of both sides of the issue. I say give him the benefit of the doubt, and if he stops being deserving of that, our liberal media will let us know.
Wouldn’t it be cool if this became a fad and other politicians started giving speeches with content? He addressed an issue and did it logically and with illustration. It wasn’t earth-shattering stuff by any means, but it was well-considered, well-delivered, and had… wow… a point.
Obama started out his speech by pointing out that the promise of our Constitution was unfulfilled from the beginning with slavery not being abolished until we fought the Civil War.So race has been an issue from the very start of our nation. I had hoped he would point out the promise and power of our Constitution and he did.
The second point that I particuarly found poignant was that Obama being a Black man,and a suspected racist by association, overshadowed that he might be liberal. Race being more frightening than ‘liberalism’,the boogeyman of the conservatives, is kind of ironic.
And I never thought I’d ever see a liberal Christian ever again who was recognized as such.Self-aware liberals have seemed to say that religion and liberalism are incomptabile and conservatives,especially social conservatives have been insisting for a while that the two are incompatable.If I had to categorize myself politicially and religiously I might put down ‘liberal Christian’,so I feel part of the world again.
I don’t think people so far have noticed that Obama is liberal because he is so measured and logical in his approach ,so the secret is to listen to people before we label them. If given the chance Obama will re-instate a new civility into both politics and religion ?
I just read a post elsewhere where someone contrasted the reactions of Clinton and Obama to campaign crises: “Clinton went after Obama. Obama went after the problem.”
We are too stupid,too dumbed down ,too chicken to go after the ministers of propoganda(Faux News Network-AM radio),too quick to react to a twenty second soundbite to deserve this man’s intelligence in the Whitehouse. I often think what has happened in the last seven years is punishment/retribution for this nations hate/intolerance/indifference…The war on intelligence is alive and well. I truly feel sorry for our kids. This was an excellent speech that should not have been necessary.
Things I didn’t like:
1) threw his granny under the bus. What’s up with that?
2) gave legitimicy to white resentment of AA and busing, but not to those politicians who “exploit” those fears. Sorry, but if the fears are legitimate, there is nothing wrong with politicians trying to address those issues.
3) In the end, he didn’t really distance himself from Wright and others who think like that. He in fact said that he understood where Wright was coming from. I think that he can’t really distance himself from Wright, because Wrights views on race and American are mainstream African American views, and his base is with African Americans.
Interesting comments, Buzzcut. Here are some other ways of looking at the same thing.
1. I know several Black pastors (and have several in my family). Routinely, I have heard anti-white, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-immigrant rhetoric. I let them know that while their comments aren’t welcome in my home, they will ALWAYS be. Love doesn’t disown. That was Obama’s message. Hmm, I think Jesus said something about this as well.
I’m Obama’s age and am from Lafayette. I remember the police appearing at the back of out church on Sundays to ensure that the pastor wasn’t inciting “our good negroes.” Communication at that church, Second Baptist on 18th, was tightly controlled with the spector of fear (like so many of the thousands of Black churches scattered across the South and North). That a Black pastor is still pissed? Take a look at the reality of the churches in your midst.
I hate messages of division, but as Obama states, one can’t take those messages out of context or demand that people “just get over it.” We’ve been trying that in this country for decades. Doesn’t work. As a former AA officer (I was a Black woman in HR. Where else were they going to stick me), I can attest to white anger. Black achievement in this company of over 4,000 was consistently met with cries of “foul!” and I was constantly challenged to explain why a Black person got some position or another. Angry, one day, I offered to set up a promotion-evaluation committee and put all of the white complainers on it. I told the several who gathered in my office that, while completely illegal, they could review the promotional packages that included Blacks and decide for themselves whether they deserved their promotions. Only one got the sarcasm. The rest wanted the committee.
I think our problem in terms of race relations is that we don’t tell our particular truth about it. Mine? I heard my good family members say somethings heartbreaking things about people. It’s an unfortunate part of the human condition. Having lead AA/EEO/diversity/inclusion workshops for a number of years in major companies, I can tell you this: when people stop and say what they really feel, as searing as it may be, magic happens. God can steer a parked car and can’t change a heart that’s pretending.
I, like Obama, have a diverse family with whites and native peoples in it. We all love each other, and at the same time, the seams that hold us together show wear. However, with only a few exceptions, we talk about it. A lot.
2. As I said before, there are many in the white community who believe that Black achievement is a myth–demanding proof that a Black person “deserved” the promotions or admissions they received. Because of my role, I’ve been privileged to hear about it–sometimes from some of the most conflicted people I’ve ever met…people who angrily espoused these points of view while asking “Lalita, does this make me a bad person?” My answer: No.
Any misapplication of AA/EEO law can be laid at the feet of those responsible for the enforcement of these policies and laws: the mostly white management and HR staffers in companies (speaking demographically, here and not for effect). I was stunned and continue to be so at how very little leadership understands how these laws work: quotas have been illegal for decades, hiring the underqualified on the basis of race (any race), is illegal, automatically assuming that minorities or women are underqualified for no other reason than group membership is evidence of discriminatory points of view.
For me, I was among the very first minority students in a honors program in the entire state, graduated in the top 10% at Jeff, was a National Merit scholar and graduated from Purdue cum laude. Still, even in my position in HR, OTHER HR STAFFERS assumed that I was hired simply because of my pigment and plumbing.
Sad and disgusting, but I had to deal with them where they were–not where I wanted (desperately) for them to be. My every move was challenged until they got how qualified I was. Some in the company never trusted that I was deserving. Never.
I think, here, we’ve got a kind of race relations Pareto Principle where a fraction of the people are creating the majority of the problem. However, here, the silent majority is fearful that “where there’s smoke there’s fire.” From my formerly Southern family’s point of view: “Where there’s smoke, there may be a burning cross.”
Point of view.
3. Distancing himself from his friend and former paster vs distancing himself from his friend’s comments. This is Christian Holy Week, a time for us to reflect on the fact that Jesus didn’t throw US under the bus–and his contemporaries weren’t just saying mean things to each other…they were killing people (um, like Him). With Jessee Jackson and Bill Clinton, Billy Graham and Richard Nixon, Rev. Haggee and McCain, Mitt Romney and his religion with an admittedly racist recent past (check out the Mark of Cain doctrine), Bob Johnson / Geralding Ferraro / Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, I’d think so much less of them if they disowned those people and churches that had been important to them.
You can’t fix a flat tire if you’ve sold the car.
I’m very excited that we have this opportunity to talk. You can’t imagine. Last night, my friends and family shared stories about their lives and hopes, looking for even more common ground. Regardless of how this turns out for the Democratic party, if we “keep it real” rather than “keep it correct” we can propel this country forward at ever greater speed.
Thanks, Doug, for letting us play in your sandbox and I invite you all (Norther for y’all) to play in mine (http://valuesalliance.org).
I understand where Wright is coming from.
I doubt I would be in agreement with most of the solutions he might offer. But I could see there being some legitimate reasons to gripe.
Consider that it’s assumed (often for electoral reasons) that exiled Cubans have legitimate gripes about having lost land almost fifty years ago due to a regime change. But blacks who descend from slaves, and who in many places suffered government-back discrimination up until about fifty years ago just have bad attitudes about it and should get over it. Whether a particular group is part of your base tends to determine whether the gripes have merit.
I find it interesting that Obama referred to Rev. Wright as “my former pastor”.
I think Wright simply is no longer pastor for that church, making him a “former pastor.”
Obama didnt ‘throw anybody under the bus,’ his grandmother nor his former Pastor ,who is now retired. The usual meaning of ‘throw someone under a bus’ is to ‘scapegoat someone’,as I understand the term.Obama calls for a broader solution as Lalita and others above have so well described. Scapegoating is a cop out instead of looking at the issues,and so there doesn’t have to be a solution and that’s what Obama was talking about as I understood the thrust his speech. I just hope so fervently that Obama gets elected . He seems truly unique in the most positive way.Not everyone wants solutions.I’m an old ,retired, white, kind of cynical school teacher and I’ve seen no candidate like Obama in my lifetime,and I’m including JFK.
Lalita, thank you for a well reasoned and thoughtful reply.
I understand where you’re coming from. These Wright-esque people are out there. They have their opinions. I happen to think that they make up a large portion of the African American community (as evidenced by Trinity having 8000 parishoners). So it is problematic for Obama to turn his back on Wright.
On the other hand, I just think that there are some views that are beyond the pale, and are so heinous the they really require more than a mild verbal rebuke. Blaming the US for what happened on Sept. 11th is such a view.
Let me give you another example. I threw someone out of my house for using the N word in my and my wife’s presence. Okay, it wasn’t a family member, but then I don’t have family members that use the N word. Never. Not once. And unlike most whites, who have a very… theoretical understanding of African Americans, I was born and raised in Freeport, New York which at the time was well over 50% African American.
So, is it un-Christian to throw someone out of your house? Should you love the sinner but hate the sin? I suppose if Wright would repudiate his retrograde, racist views, forgiveness would be in order. But Wright has not done that, and is not going to do that.
Until he does, and until others in Obama’s coalition do, I wish that Obama would say something like, “I cannot accept the support of Wright, nor anyone sympathetic to the views expressed by Wright. If you are such a person, please refrain from involvement in my campaign and I ask you to cast your ballot elsewhere”.
To do otherwise is to “hate the sinner and love the sin”. It is enabling of the sin.
Lou, Obama most certainly threw granny under the bus.
What do we all know about granny? Before yesterday, she was just the lady that more or less raised Obama. Read his book. She and her husband, more than anyone else, made Obama who he is today.
Now what do we know about her? Presumably, if she could say things that make Obama cringe, she’s a stone cold racist.
T, those former-Cubans you speak of don’t expect reparations from anyone other than those who stole their property from them.
I have no doubt that one day these people will be able to go back to Cuba and seek redress for their stolen property. The Cubans will have to pay up for their illegal “nationalizations”.
That is quite a different situation than African Americans are in. By any measure other than one that compares them with white Americans, they have won life’s lottery. Any other country, any other time in history, and they would be in much, much worse shape than they are in America circa 2008.
Nah, Lou, a scapegoat is a blameless sacrifice (Leviticus 16). “Throwing someone under the bus” is what one does before skedaddling, hoping the attached baggage is crushed into the bargain. Senator Obama didn’t do any skedaddling, and he was masterful (I think) in refuting claims he’s bound by everything Jeremiah Wright has ever said. But those charges are ludicrous on their face and ought to have been dealt with with a quick soundbite, instead of another episode of Blame the 60s (and the people who made it possible, sometimes with their lives, for interracial couples–such as the Senator’s parents–to walk the streets of the Mainland without a worse than even chance of lynching.
I’m less sanguine about the speech than Doug, but it was good to see a few Democratic concerns have begun working their way back into his public presentations, even if he’s as yet only edged the hallowed Reagan legacy in the general direction of the Greyhound’s rear wheels.
instead of another episode of Blame the 60s
Watch out, because Obama’s close association with William “we should have bomber more” Ayers has yet to hit the mainstream.
Not to mention Obama’s mother’s political views (he’s almost certainly a Red diaper baby, Mom was a card carrying Commie).
This is going to be a fun campaign!
Obama’s grandmother never used racial terms to him because probably she didn’t see him as a threat.But Obama himself cringed because he saw himself as a black man. That’s how racial views warp us,but we have never discussed things like that until it’s a family dilemma. Obama is seeking to start a grassroots american dialogue.Give him credit for that.
(Edited by request of commenter — Doug)
Buzzcut says,posting about Obama’s already legendary white grandmother:
Now what do we know about her? Presumably, if she could say things that make Obama cringe, she’s a stone cold racist.
……………………………………..
It seems to me that is squarely the point.Obama is saying his grandmother was indeed a racist in the pure sense of the term.. Race destroys perception from both sides.And we are all victimized.
There are many respectable,well-meaning people who are indeed racist.There are people in my own family who fear the changing neighborhood they live in.One side of a changing neighborhood is panicked white exodus.It’s the kind of racism that is self-perpetuating.
Housing patterns have maintained race division and Blacks are the first ones wanting to escape.Racism is never one-sided and we spend so damned much wasted side pointing out racist views ‘on the other side’. Let’s just assume that and go beyond. There are exceptions in housing patterns and I’m familiar with some very stable Black-White,and all Black middle class neighborhoods in Chicago,but it takes city planning and government involvement,and a certain amount of race awarerness to avoid the housing panic that is apt to be encouraged by our ‘free market system’.
That’s why I was impressed with public housing in France way back in the 70’s,and I even lived there for several weeks,seeing mixed race functioning when it wasn’t t functioning in the States.In France, if one gets government stipends, then one lives in mixed-race housing. No discussion.And there was an effort to keep racial balance.But it’s also true the French don’t have the same endemic racial paranoia that Americans have.But you’d have to see both systems close up before you could judge either intelligently.In France you’d be ostracized from the culture faster for not having proper table manners than you would be because of your race.
Looking ahead to a possible Obama-
Cain campaign,we need to face race openly or race will defeat Obama more than all the other credentials of both candidates.If race is the deciding factor,as I fear it could be,that would be an American tragedy.
Hopefully if my post is commented on, there isn’t included an anti-French or anti-socialism tirade,because that is avoiding the issue.
Yeah, I like the idea that Obama is clean.
Too many politicians are dirty.
By the time the Cubans go back, most of the landowners whose lands were stolen will be dead. I presume their children will have no claim to make against the government, since it wasn’t specifically their land that was stolen, but their parents’. Much as it was not currently living blacks, but their great-great-great grandparents, who had their labor stolen.
Buzzcut–
Define “close association”.
It appears to me that Obama served on some kind of government board with William Ayers, and was at his house once.
By those criteria, maybe you could tell us about Reagan’s or Bush’s “close association” with Saddam Hussein–or Osama Bin Laden for that matter.
Buzzcut, I wouldn’t go so far as to call Obama’s grandmother a racist. I grew up in the south around family members who regularly used offensive language and not exactly PC terms for other races. Yet only a few of them would I even consider racists. They were raised during an era when such language was commonplace and didn’t necessarily reflect the feelings of the person using the language. I was probably close to 10 years of age before I realized that the infamous “N” word was a social and private no-no.
My grandmother regularly employed a black woman who lived near our farm to sit for the kids – sometimes on week-end trips. Had she truly been a racist, she wouldn’t have allowed the woman into our home, let alone allow her to stay in her home and take charge of her grandchildren for three days straight. Ruby was a sweet old woman and ended up being one of my grandmother’s best friends.
It is our environment that dictates not only our use of language, but also our fears. I believe Obama addressed a lot of this very convincingly, with honesty and grace. I would be proud to say Barack Obama was my president.