For many Americans, racism is a topic so painful that we edge away from it, we deny it, or -- worst -- we claim it's all on the other side. In other words, for some in America there is a gap in knowledge and understanding of everything that happened (and didn't happen) between Paul Revere's ride and the bridge at Selma.
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. ...
... The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
The decision to sign that document even as the slave trade and slavery were allowed to continue -- for economic and political convenience -- may be understandable but never entirely forgivable. They launched our nation into very troubled waters.
Some of the racism and anger in 2008 comes directly from a political and educational system which doesn't allow for real understanding of how Americans became Americans and just who those Americans include. Even now there is a feeling of "us" and "them" between the descendants of the men who signed that document, their European immigrant neighbors on the one hand, and the descendants of those slaves on the other. The feelings are still strong enough that they can be exploited very effectively by politicians and their media stenographers. We have ourselves to blame, all of us. We may be in the process of throwing away a someone who'd likely lead us out of our 200-year morass.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
A great number of those white Americans Obama referred to agree to a greater or lesser extent with what Reverend Wright said in one sermon about America's sins. We agree Michelle Obama that it's hard to be a proud American these days. Many Americans don't wear lapel pins or even recite the pledge, much less with hand over heart, whether because it's not our custom to do so or because it would be hypocritical. We grew up with a different definition of patriotism, a definition that included more responsibility and less self-glorification.
For us no less than for former Marine Jeremiah Wright, patriotism shouldn't be a blind romantic passion all dressed up in bright colors but an active state of concerned citizenship that demands self-criticism. We realize that repetitions of sound bites without context, displays of lapel pins, and costly military adventures are there to lure our attention from problems the powerful don't want us to deal with, including divisive racism. We are on the side of Barack Obama when he says:
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.”
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We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.
I don't know if it will "work" against the likes of O'Reilly and Hannity and cable news, which seems unable to show any other of Wright's speeches except the now-almost mind-numbingly familiar clips. What I do know is that it was the right speech, with the right nuance and brave. If America cannot embrace such complexity, then that says more about our current polity than it does about Obama.
He tried to shine a light on that clannish place where grudges and grievances flourish. After racing from race for a year, he plowed in and took a stab at showing blacks what white resentment felt like and whites what black resentment felt like.
(He was spot-on about my tribe of working-class Irish, the ones who have helped break his winning streak in New Hampshire and Ohio, and may do so in Pennsylvania.)
He rightly struck back at right-wing hysteria-mongers. “Talk-show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism,” he said, “while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.”
Yet Mr. Obama didn't condemn the Rev. Wright even as he rejected his rhetoric. Instead, he placed the 66-year-old pastor into historical context: "For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years." He added, "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."
Yesterday was the first time I've been genuinely impressed with Obama. Or, for that matter, with any presidential candidate since I came of age to vote in '76. Growing up during the Vietnam war and the civil rights era, I formed certain conclusions that remain my political bedrock. No candidate had ever struck that bedrock (not even Micheal Dukasis- ha, ha, ha). None really ever came close. I assumed that's the way it would likely always remain.
Up till now, I'd been unable to draw a bead on just who Obama was. While prepared to support him in November, my vote would have been just one more in a long line of having rolled the dice in hopes for the best. That's no longer the case. Hereafter, I'll support him with that intangible spirit of doing so with some sense of pride.
I think he must have done himself a world of good in the eyes of the superdelegates, too. I can't imagine that speech not figuring prominently, and positively, in their calculations.
Posted by: Jim W | March 19, 2008 at 01:00 PM