Now that we’ve had a chance to digest the speech made yesterday by Barack Obama, I just wanted to go through the speech and provide my thoughts on what was said. It might be a bit lengthy and not overly interesting for the casual reader, so if you wish to skip through the article, I wouldn’t blame you. Actually, I cut the piece short since I found myself getting too nit-picky on the how paragraphs and sentences should be rearranged, and that really would have taken away from my overall impression of the speech.  Plus, I have been working on this for a few days now, and I didn’t want this to really become “old news” by the time I finally posted it.  :)   So here are my “pro’s” and “con’s” from the speech and an overall grade.

Pro’s:

- Providing historical context to bring the race discussion into the 21st century.

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.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

He didn’t throw his pastor “under the bus” for political gain.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Explaining how black racism and hatred exists and continues.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. 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 the 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 barbershop or 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. 

Explaining how white resentment grows.

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.

Calling out the challenge facing our nation today.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

Con’s:

Victimization.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

…

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.

Contradiction to his prior statements regarding if he heart Wright make such comments in the past.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Throwing his Grandmother under the bus unnecessarily.

I can no more disown him 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. 

 Trying to blame Republicans and institutions that go contrary to Democratic platforms for making the racial problem worse in the modern world.

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.

As you can see, it was far from a perfect speech, no matter how some in the media and the politicians wish to make it.  Obama strayed from the message of explaining what the problem is and what steps we need to take to fix it to plug his campaign (which he probably didn’t need to do) and trying to place blame for the problems on his competition (since that just continues the cycle which he said he is trying to fix).  Also, his delivery lacked the passion that most of his speeches have, but that was to be expected since this isn’t a part of his normal rah-rah stump speeches.

For content, I give him a B.  It is a difficult topic to discuss without pitting two sides against each other, and I think he did the best he could.  In delivery, I give him a C for how flat the speech came across.  And for lasting impact, I also give him a C, since I don’t believe this speech really stoked the fire in the bellies of the citizens to work towards making racial issues something of the past.  It will take many years for that to occur, and even then, you are going to be able to remove some natural distrust from people’s genetic coding as long as there are stark differences between appearances.  With that said, I give him a B- over all.  A good try, but no lasting impact.

For some additional reading, check out these sites:
Political Affairs - “Why Right-wing Pundits Don’t Like Obama’s “Race Speech”"
The Independent – “Sarah Churchwell: The big issue in America is not race, it’s class”
The Morning Call – “Pundits missed significance of Obama’s ‘race’ speech”
The Rebel Yell – “The tragedy of Barack Obama’s race”
Financial Times – “Doubts emerge over Obama’s race speech”

For some additional reading across the web, check out these blogs:
Texan Democrat – “Theology, Politics, Wright and Obama”
Forum Politics – “Responses To Obama’s Speech On Race”
Copius Dissent – “Obama & Imus…”
Our World As We See It – “Barack Obama Supporters Put Your Concerns To Rest.”
The Liberal Journal – “After Speech, Flashes of Reason on the Right”

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