Text of this remarkable speech here.
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.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
If there is any justice in this world, this piece of Obama’s speech today should be the news for a really long time. In fact, there are enough good bits in this to dominate the news until PA ballots are cast.
This was a brilliant and powerful speech addressing long festering racial issues in a way that asks people get beyond themselves and get beyond the pettiness to remember that we are Americans facing some of the biggest challenges of many of our lifetimes. Who else talks about race like this? Who accepts that there are real issues on all sides; who accepts that those issues may not ever completely go away; that we are all touched by it in many ways, but asks us to remember who we really are and get to the real work?
The stories say that Obama wrote this himself and certainly there is nothing about this speech or performance that seemed poll-tested, or trying to hedge a bet. It seemed honest and adult (which I suspect makes it vulnerable to the kind of death only cable can invoke) and – remarkably – did not throw his pastor under the bus for the sake of either ambition or the mob at the gate.
This was one of the most Presidential speeches I have seen in the past 8 years – from either the current occupant or any of its recent aspirants.
You can bet that the wall-to-wall howling about Rev. Wright is just a small foreshadowing of what the VRWC will unleash should Obama be our candidate. The media will remain largely blind to the fact that, in the main, support of repub candidates by incendiary preachers from the right aren’t treated as so out of the ordinary. In spite of all of this and all of the other obstacles, I still think that the fundamental decency of this man along with his smarts, his grace, and his vision of American Community are attributes that the Office of the President Presidency needs right now.