I know this post is a day late and a dollar short, but I figured I’d get my two cents in on Barack Obama’s speech (Dispatches tomorrow will focus on the speech, as well).
1. This was a rare speech, one that asks us to rise to our better selves as a nation, that does not shy away from the tough questions and attempts to get past the basic issue — which is that, on matters of race, blacks and whites speak different languages.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
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.
Bridging this divide, Obama said, overcoming what he calls “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years,” will require “working together” to “move beyond some of our old racial wounds.”
(W)e have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
2. Obama was speaking to everyone — by the way in which he both defended and criticized the Rev. Wright and through the story of his grandmother.
I can no more disown (the Rev. Wright) 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.
3. The positive reaction was fairly widespread, with most editorial boards praising the candidate. What was striking, though, was the positive response on the conservative end of the spectrum — including initial kudos from Pat Buchanan and Charles Murray — though the praise from the right has since dissipated.
Here is James Fallows at The Atlantic, which I think sums up a lot of the positive reaction:
This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney’s speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy’s famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.
He adds:
It was a moment that Obama made great through the seriousness, intelligence, eloquence, and courage of what he said. I don’t recall another speech about race with as little pandering or posturing or shying from awkward points, and as much honest attempt to explain and connect, as this one.
And from Scott Horton at Harper’s:
This speech puts Obama on a level above his critics, and it is something that will speak over time and that should be heard over the vacuous chatter of the political punditry. It is something sublime.
4. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News — writing on his Attytood blog — calls it perfectly when he says that
Obama found a new and clearer voice, a way to talk about — and not to deny — that alienation, anger and pessimissm but also to talk about why he believes that his generation — and specifically Barack Obama — will be the Americans to finally erase much of that anger, by channeling it into positive energy.
Like I said, not everyone wants to hear this — there are many who, a generation removed from that famous ad, still want to believe in nothing more complex than a whitewashed version of “Morning in America.” But to many more, Obama’s Philadelphia speech is finally a dose of what the other candidates have only promised — straight talk, on America’s most difficuit subject. In doing so, he answered the question that has hung over his campaign like a butcher’s knife for too long: Who is Barack Obama?
The ball is now in America’s court. We still don’t know whether a black man can become president of the United States. But we have seen — beyond any shadow of doubt — that a black man can be presidential.
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Hank Kalet 