The Obama speach...
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- ukit0
http://www.openleft.com/showDiar…
Barack Obama's hearalded speech on race is the most honest appraisal of racial problems in America I can remember a politician ever giving. It is long and nuanced, not easy to encapsulate in sound-bites. He describes his experiences in the Trinity United church of Christ and with Reverend Wright, saying that while he disagrees with some of Wright's statements, he understands the frustrations that give rise to such views. He also understands the frustrations that give rise to views such as those expressed by Geraldine Ferraro. Both views, he says, are wrong because they are limited and based on stereotypes, and assume that America is static, that we cannot change.
The entire speech is at TPM Election Central and it is well worth the read.
Here's the nut of the speech:
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 yet to 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.
more:
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.
And then this:
For we have a choice in this country. 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." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
It continues in that vein. It is quite remarkable. His biggest gamble is to treat the subject with the depth and seriousness and complexity that it deserves. He is banking on enough reporters, pundits and voters hearing him out on this very difficult subject. If anyone can move our dialogue on race, our political discourse and our media coverage forward, he can.
If we can't, as he says, we are condemned to repeat this mess over and over again.
- vanilla_cam0
"I can't say I would do anything like his because I don't know what his is but I can tell you that I will take a look at it and you know I have a lot to say about a lot of issues whether I give a speech or not I can not predict." -- Hillary Clinton, responding to a question about Barack Obama's race speech, March 18, 2008
- harlequino0
Haven't said it yet cuz I haven't bought into it. But I will say it now after listening to this speech. The guy has me sold. I am behind him, and I hope he gets the nomination.
And goddamn, I hope he delivers. And I don't mean deliver the big solution, but at least delivers the spirit to inspire all around him to make a positive change for this country.
- obsolete0
I still think he is going to lose.
I'm not an american and I don´t know that much about the politics game there... but in the end of the day, vote is secret.... and on the day following the eleciont post-secret will be filled by "I wish I had voted for Obama" postcards...
Anyway he seems like a good leader, but hey, germany had someone who sounded like a good leader in the 30´s, and the outcome was far from brilliant. Anyway I hope the best candidate wins, not only the best for americans but for the rest of the world as well...
With this I'm saying that maybe Bush was the best choice for americans and the worst for all of us living in a place where a beauty "wannabe" can´t point on a map....- um, there is a wee bit of a difference in tone and message between obama and hitler matekelpie
- mikotondria30
Yeh, I for one would have 1000% more faith in our Govt./state if he was the figurehead. Don't get me wrong, I know I won't have any more real power than the corporations let me, but theres only a small margin of hope that wavers either way for people to be willing to change and grow and make differences. I wouldn't mind paying significantly more tax if I knew that it was in some way going to help build the country that I believe we could unite aroud the vision of, with him in 'charge'.
There are some tough, uncharted times to come, and some dark days - we need someone we can be hopeful about, and trusting of.
- Randd0
and, oh yeah, he wrote it himself
"I spent the last five hours in my woodshop with a lathe and sandpaper and an awl, carving this beautiful oak chair that I now present to you.
I did it because you will need something to sit down on when the full measure of what Ambinder wrote crashes upon you like all the heavens and the stars above.
Let me repeat it.
Because it bears repeating.
That speech today? The one that has pundits--from the liberal David Corn at The Nation ("This is as sophisticated a discussion of race as any American politician has sought to present to the public") to the conservative Charles Murray, of National Review Online ("it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."), and those inbetween--noting the brilliance, sophistication, sincerity and candor of the words spoken by Obama? That speech?
He wrote it himself.
Once more, with feeling:
He wrote it. Himself.
Barack Obama did. He wrote it.
Now, if you are like me, and I pray for your soul you are not, you had the normal reaction to finding out this piece of information. You rushed right to the Library of Congress to determine exactly the last time that a President or a presidential candidate wrote a major speech alone, by himself or herself.
And, of course, what you discover is that other than the speeches Obama has written for himself, the last time a major speech was written without the aid of a speechwriter by a president or presidential candidate was Nixon's "Great Silent Majority" speech delivered on October 13, 1969.
Now that was a good speech. Evil, no doubt, to its very core, and designed to proliferate the feelings that allowed the great Southern Strategy success, but a good speech nevertheless.
In other words, not in my lifetime. And I am oldish. I have kids and wear dark socks with slippers and complain about the quality of my lawn and get hungover way too easily. But in the last 37 years there hasn't been a speech like this written by the man himself. Not like this.
Here is a chair. Regardless of who you support, or what you think of Obama, I want you to sit here, right here on this chair and consider something wonderful. To wit:
It is possible that we will have a President who not only will speak in full, complete sentences, but who will do so in a manner that is eloquent, and who will also be articulate and eloquent in delivering words he is intelligent enough to know, understand, and use in a speech he is capable of writing himself.
This chair, it is oak.
Sit and think about that.
After seven years of the worst crumble-bumblings of the nattering nabob from Crawford, think about that.
He wrote that speech. He wrote it. He, himself. "
- I think this is a really exciting possibility for the US, and thus, the rest of the world...MrOneHundred
- ...I just hope you guys don’t blow it. And I hope Obama doesn’t get assassinated.MrOneHundred
- ukit0
This is an pretty interesting article in terms of understanding Obama vs. Wright
http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/200…
Black Conservatives in Large and Small Caps
About a year ago, I penned a post entitled "Taking Thomas Seriously", about the particularly political ideology held by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In it, I noted that both liberals and conservatives misunderstood Thomas' orientation because they tried to map him onto "standard" (White) political categories. Thomas is a conservative, yes, but specifically he is a Black Conservative, which is a very particular philosophical tradition that does not perfectly align with plain old vanilla White conservatives.
Not all Black conservatives are Black Conservatives (that is, there are conservative Black people, such as Ward Connerly, who I would not identify as part of the Black Conservative tradition), and, more importantly, not all Black Conservatives are conservative (in that, on our "traditional" left/right axis, some would be placed on the left). However, because most people, particularly most Whites, aren't familiar with Black Conservative ideology, it leads to significant misunderstanding about where its adherents are coming from when they do show up on the national stage. All this is preface to point out that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he who has nearly derailed Obama's campaign, is a Black Conservative. To be sure, he's not a conservative (needless to say, capitalization matters in this post). But he's not a "liberal" either -- his political alignment doesn't comfortably fit onto models premised on White ideological positioning. Black Conservatism, like Black Liberalism, is not wholly divorced from "standard" Conservatism and Liberalism -- but at best they intersect at odd angles.
Black Conservatism essentially operates off the premise that racism is an ingrained and potentially permanent part of White-dominated institutions. As a result, Black Conservatives essentially tell Blacks they can only rely on themselves to get ahead in America -- counting on White people to be moral or "do the right thing" is a waste of time. Politically, this means building tight-knit communities that emphasize the patronizing of identifiably Black institutions, with the end result being social independence from White America. In this, it mixes at least partial voluntary self-segregation with a significant aversion to external dependency, with Whites and White institutions being defined as outsiders who can't be trusted. Every dollar that flows out of the Black community and into the hands of White America is a dollar that is in the control of a group that, at best, has a unique set of interests that can't be counted on to converge with those of Black people. Contained within this school are thinkers as far-ranging as Derrick Bell, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Clarence Thomas, Huey P. Newton, and Malcolm X. Black groups and leaders who were/are not Black Conservatives include W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, and yes, Barack Obama.
Black Conservatism holds obvious parallels with traditional paleo-conservatism (hence the name): the mistrust of outsiders, looking out for one's own people first (and concurrently, self-reliance over dependency), lack of faith in high-minded moralism and ideology. But since African-Americans are a minority people in the United States, some other qualities are grafted on which are less familiar to majoritarian conservatism: most notably, the nation is considered to be an outsider, making the ideology significantly less inclined towards patriotism than the average White conservative. The "anti-American" elements, normally associated as a far-left belief, actually are a closer relative to conservative xenophobia: the analogy would be White American Conservative: United Nations :: Black American Conservative : United States. Each represents a distant governmental body, run by outsiders, which represents a putative threat to group autonomy. The mistrust of authority, often characterized as a left-belief, becomes a right-ward belief once its conceptualized as mistrust of foreign authority -- within their own communities, Black Conservatives often create very rigid hierarchal models (particularly on gender issues). Ultimately, though, what Black Conservatives preach is independence: As Marcus Garvey, an key Black Conservative writer in the early 20th century put it, "No race is free until it has a strong nation of its own; its own system of government and its own order of society. Never give up this idea."
Virtually all the controversial statements said by Rev. Wright make the most sense as expositions on Black Conservative ideology. His disclaimer of the pursuit of "middle-class-ness" is a term of art; he's flaming Black people who are more concerned about looking good to White people than they are about insuring the health of their own community -- including those who haven't yet moved up the ladder. His extraordinarily grim predictions about the state of racism in America are textbook Black Conservative arguments, as are his efforts to break down the idea that America is a particularly moral government that can be trusted (rightly, when he notes that America too has engaged in state-sponsored terrorism in Latin America and supported it in South Africa; wrongly when he alleges that we infected Black folk with the AIDS virus).
I'm not saying I agree with all of his points -- I'm not a Black Conservative, and as I outlined in the Thomas post, I'm not sure that a White person can morally adopt the premises of Black Conservatism. But we can't understand what we're yelling about until we properly position it within its philosophical school. This is why I feel confident in asserting that Obama and Wright are not of a political kind -- they operate from totally different ends of the Black Conservative spectrum. Obama is an integrationist, the very act of running for President means that he believes that there is a space for Blacks in our hitherto White-dominated government, and all of his speeches, policies, and writings have indicated he believes that there is hope for an America that is not separated and divided on racial lines. All of these positions would be derided as doe-eyed idealism by a true Black Conservatism. And if there is one thing Obama can't be accused of, it's of being too much of a pessimist.
- PonyBoy0
- wtf, hahahahhaamrdobolina
- Doing the Lord's work....TheBlueOne
- This guy is a low life.sofakingzero
- kalkal0
I'd love to hear Bush try and make it through this whole speech
- I’d love to hear Bush make through a whole sentence.MrOneHundred
- molo0
i heard some black guy was asking for change in downtown chicago...get a job whacko