Barack Obama’s More Perfect Union
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.
Tags: 2008 Presidential, Barack Obama
It was an historic speech. I heard one pundit liken it to Kennedy’s speech on Catholisism which was also an historic speech.
Speechifying has been ridiculed by the Clinton camp, but speeches do have an impact and they can change the way Americans do politics. How else do you inspire a people to strive toward a better society? That day in Rodney Square with 20,000 other Delawareans listening to Obama’s vision for the country will always be in my memory. It was a majestic moment, even if I did have to stand next to Jan Ting. In fact, because I stood next to Jan Ting. If you were in the crowd that day you felt the spirit of cooperation and hope.
This is a leader! This is a person who can change us for the better. I hope we don’t miss this opportunity. It would break my heart.
As Tracey Morgan said on SNL:
Though Obama’s speech was a bit longer and not as funny, both men have come to terms with what the issue is: America is racist.
Obama tells us we can continue in the ugly spiral we are in today, a spiral of lies and anger that has gone on since 1968, or we can move on by embracing our past (both bad and good) while trying to change the future.
I hope for the sake of my young boy we chose the later.
I suppose I’d feel the way Obama does too, if I’d attended a racist church for twenty years. Love how he dealt with that too: “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand.”
Tracey Morgan’s skit was funny as hell.
What I liked about Obama’s speech was that he doesn’t ask anybody to top being racist, bigoted or even a conspiracy theorist. He does ask that we remember that we are all supposed to be American and that any chance for change is going to be dependent on that.
The lies and anger go well back before 1968, but I absolutely agree that it would be useful to not hold each other hostage to that legacy while we are trying to achieve other stuff.
Hang on to that cluelessness, GRex — it’s always going to be your most flattering profile.
G Rex wrote:
Really, that’s all you got from the speech? You must be one of the knuckleheads that they were talking about on MSNBC.
“Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.”
Jarring to the untrained ear? I’ll say. Wright was certainly jarring enough for Oprah Winfrey to quit this church. And no, that’s not all I got from this speech, there was hope and change too.
Whatever. I’m done discussing Wright with you.
If you want to discuss the future of America, I’m ready for that discussion.
Memo to the SkyDad-fearing Right:
Once you are able to explain the rationale of the Right’s love of everything Falwell (heard he lost some weight recently 😉 ), Robertson, and Hagee….then, and only fucking then, will you have any credibility in talking about Wright.
Falwell? Robertson? Hagee? That ain’t me, baby. Oh, and you forgot Oral “900 foot Jesus” Roberts.
“I’m done discussing Wright with you.”
Of course you are, because you’re deathly afraid for your golden boy.
Cetainly not you, G….just the wackjobs that feel a ting in the head after realizing their two-face-ness….
Didn’t Wright grow up back in the day when there were White Only bathrooms? Fountains, swimming pools, schools?
I mean can’t the guy be angry a little? Black people have gotten a raw deal in this country and continue to. Driving while black etc.
so I can cut the guy some slack. As a minority I feel his pain.
On the other hand the Dobson’s, Fallwells, Roberston’s, Haggerties of this country didn’t really suffer the same type of oppression to make them the so called racists you are labeling Wright to be. They just hate people because they are different and they use the “God Told me so in the Bible” crap to spew their hate.
I guess what I’m saying is if some Cracker was holding me back and continues to do so I’d be pissed and so I can understand why Wright is. That same bible that is telling Robertson to hate homo’s also says God created all men equal but call me crazy, this country didn’t really live by that motto until about what 50 years ago?
But if I’m some uppity white guy with his own private Jet goes bitching about a few women diking it out, being the reason for 9/11 and the decaying of our society when they did nothing to hurt them that doesn’t afford him the same privilige to hate a group of people. In my humble opinion
you dig?
if we could only keep the dagos out of our bathrooms; they can come in and clean though
Who goes?
Ah! DeyGoes!
Watch it, nemski, my aunt bleeds ragu!
don’t worry VC. I urinate on his lawn every night
I have a big D burnt into his lawn. Wait till the grass grows in!
did I say Italians, I meant Micks 🙂
DV, I dig. The problem I have with guys like Rev. Wright is that they’re stuck in the days of Jim Crow, and they perpetuate the victimhood culture in their preaching. Is Obama right in saying that Trinity is normal for a predominately black church? I’ve only ever been to one, and that was in basic training. All I remember was the singing, not the preaching. Oh, and apparently the good Reverend also thinks God hates fags.
What we have is a tincture of 20 years on a few minutes of Youtube, hardly representative of the body of his sermonizing.
And to those who insist that Obama is lying when he said that the pastor never acted like that when he was with him personally, just chill.
Wright was his spiritual counsel. Why is it hard to believe that his leadership was focused on the personal in those instances and not a political agenda?