Let’s talk about race, baby (Part I of II)
Barack Obama’s recent speech on race in America invites Americans to try and be honest and respectful about their feelings on race relations in the US. This topic will be presented in two parts. The first (this one) will give a little context around the speech and start to delve into it a bit.
Part 2 will be for personal experiences and discussions.
In an earlier blog post, I wrote about why I’m supporting Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. Most of the reasons I gave were very issue specific; some of them even techie geek issues, like net neutrality. It was a pretty safe discussion to have, and that discussion, like so many others I’ve read on the Internet, were pretty safe policy discussions. Hell, at the last Democratic debate, there was a seventeen minute discussion on the nuances of a health-care policy. It was a policy wonk’s dream come true!
But issues are good, issues have meat. Of course, sometimes the rhetoric is ratcheted up and issues become more like talking points. I for one am sick about hearing about 3am calls to the White House. But it’s still a fair question, and is part of the broader issue of national security aptitude, among other qualities.
Then we heard about Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s spiritual counselor, and the former pastor of his church. And with that knowledge out there, a couple clips from Wright’s sermons surfaced, and they were highly inflammatory, even vitriolic, and surfaced a couple jaw-dropping statements. These have been covered to death across the Internet and everywhere else, so if you want to open a new tab to do some research, be my guest.
For the Obama campaign, this was the kind of scandal that had the potential to completely undermine the entire campaign. It threatened to unravel the campaign’s thematic underpinnings of change and unity we’re all so familiar with. The clips that leaked were painted a startling portrait. What many viewers saw was Obama’s pastor, a black man, brimming with anger and hatred toward the United States. And this was a man who Barack had known closely for two decades. Everyone on both side was very interested in hearing Barack Obama explain it himself.
So on last Friday and into the weekend, we saw Barack Obama hit the news show circuit. It seemed to be largely a defensive damage control response initially, in which he could categorically reject the support for some of the crazy statements Rev. Wright had been making in of some video. The weekend finally gave him his chance to regain his footing and to write his ultimate speech on race. Even though the original videos still had traction on Monday, he did a good job redirecting the attention of the public and the media to what would become his riskiest and perhaps most important speech he’d ever have to give.
His speech started in the 10 am hour in Philadelphia. With an uncharacteristically subdued delivery, Barack Obama initiated a conversation with America. He did not shy from mentions of Rev. Wright; in fact, Rev. Wright seemed to be a great lead-in to his discussion. He did again take the chance to reject the content of the remarks made by the man, but he made it clear that he would not and could not thrown Jeremiah Wright under the bus. He acknowledged that his marriage and the baptisms of his children had all been performed by Rev. Wright.
And he stood up for Wright:
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 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.
If there’s a little nagging voice in your head at this point, it might be asking why someone who didn’t love America would serve as a Marine. That would be a great question, and I have no answer that I could understand why such a man would be disappointed, frustrated, and even downright angry that he was born into a time and place where segregation was systemic.
Perhaps he was angry that even though he had risked his life on the line by joining the service, he knew that it’d one day be he who was questioned about patriotism.
Perhaps taking a couple combined minutes of youtube videos as the authoritative rejection of a distinguished Marine’s career is being dumb.
I wonder if everyone here can tell me that they don’t have someone very close to them, either via bloodlines or friendship, that harbor some archaic or ignorant view that you just can’t win? It’s just like 87%chance.
Obama puts it best:
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.