History in the making

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008:
"...but race is an issue that I believe this country cannot afford to ignore right now....The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through, a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care or education or the need to find good jobs for every American.

For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends, but it does find voice in the barber shop or the beauty shop, around the kitchen table. At times that anger is exploited by politicians to gin up votes along racial lines or to make up for a politician's own failings, and occasionally it finds voice in the church on a sunday morning in the pulpit and in the pews.... 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 within the African American community in our own conditions. It 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 with out understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races...

This is where we are right now. its a racial stalemate that we've been stuck in for years.... but I have asserted a firm conviction..that working together we can move beyond some some of our racial wounds. In fact, we have no choice, no chioice if we are to continute on the path of a more perfect union. For the African American community that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victems of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice, in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances, for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs to larger aspirations of all Americans. The white woman struggling to break the class ceiling, the white man who has been laid off, to the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means also taking full responsibility for our own lives, by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair and cynicism. They must always believe that they can write their own destiny..."


[after the fact update and descent into pundit-land: It seems to me the media has missed the strongest point about Obama's race speech: its sheer honesty about what black and white people sometimes think about each other (often even with the understanding that we shouldn't think that way). Perhaps it's simply that the talking heads don't want to talk about the real issue, race in America, versus Obama's-pastor-said-what...My two cents: watch the speech in its entirety, yourself]