Barack Obama gave a major speech on race in Philadelphia today. Inflammatory statements by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have been receiving a lot of media attention — they feed into fears that many Americans have about a black guy with a funny-sounding name. Obama has strongly condemned the statements, but refused to dissociate himself from his pastor.
Instead, as evidenced in this excerpt from his speech (which he wrote himself), Obama is choosing to respond with a nuanced and honest assessment of race-based resentment in America. It’s a novel strategy; we’ll have to see if the collective attention span of the media and public is up to the task of absorbing something like this.
… This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
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.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. 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 in our condition, and 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 without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
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.
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.
A bit more below the fold.
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.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims 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 the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for 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 or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
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.
Arthur Silber reminds us of the Tuskegee experiment.
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/03/truth-is-far-worse-than-any-conspiracy.html
“To return to Wright’s now infamous and impermissible comment about the HIV virus, the following is why you should set aside your knee-jerk outrage and your real (or feigned) astonishment. This is the history you should remember, or learn for the first time. And please note: this is not distant history. In historic terms, this happened only yesterday.”
Read this too:
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/03/bland-meaningless-and-unthreatening.html
I am voting for Obama not because of this speech, but because of this one.
The basic problem of theoretical physics is that the only use for them is to make theories and to make more theoretical physicists. The consequence is that (other than for brief periods of expansion of academia) most new physics PhDs will not get jobs in the subject area that inspired them to learn the subject. No president can change these economics.
So when can you expect a society to suddenly increase funding for particle physics? It can only happen in times when the society is either (a) fooled into thinking that particle physics has practical applications, or (b) times when the society is doing so well that it has money to throw away.
And what time is now? If you’re about 50 years old or older and have a PhD in physics, you are aware of the stagflation of the 1970s and what this did to the physics community. If you’re too young and ignorant to know about what happened, do some google searches on the Vietnam war, get charts of the prices of oil and gold, and look up what happened to physics graduates in the 70s and 80s.
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. There’s no way that Obama or anyone else is going to suddenly give a big gift to particle physics. It’s far more likely that they will put a lot of money into alternative fuels, chemistry, ecology, sociology, biology, communications, etc., but these are very practical times and these are also “basic research.” The left wing is more worried about global warming and what children think about sex roles than the top quark. And the right wing doesn’t care about either.
Physics academia is going to suck for the next decade. On the other hand, the first half of those years are going to be wonderful years for agriculture, manufacturing, and other blue collar stuff involving exports. After that, we’ll all suffer for a few years while the Fed tries to stop inflation and the stock market will languish.
Humans are social animals that assign leadership to appropriate targets the same way that newborn ducks conclude that the first large moving object they see is mother. Various leaders will be blamed for the bad times or praised for the good times. But the world’s economies move in tandem, the leaders have little effect, unless they start wars. Most famously, in the great depression, every major economy on the planet crashed, no matter what economic theory their leaders believed in.
Obama as president will do nothing to calm the racial conflict in America. On the contrary, his policies will pour more gasoline on the current level of racial conflict.
Let’s take affirmative action. Post-1965 immigrants from the Carribean, Africa, Central and South America and Asia all quaily for affrimative action. In fact,they all have been recipients of Affirnmative Action. Why should White Americans be in favor of this?
Let’s take Legal post-1965 immigration policy. Post 1965 legal immigration is radically changing the racial composition of Ameica. Why should White Americans be in favor of this?
When Barack Obama campaigned in California for the Hispanic vote, he explictly appealed to Hispanic racial interests. Obama promised Hispanics in California more affrimative action and an open border hispanic immigration policy. Both of therse policies will inflame and increase the scale of racial conflict in America. Only a fool or a madman would deny this.
Obama is bad for the enviroment. Legal and illegal post -1965 immigration policy -when you take into account the number of offspring hispanics,asians, muslims,carribeans and africans are having in America-accounts for 100 percent of current US population growth. I suppose liberal supporters of Barack Obama expect White Americans to stop breeding to compensate.
Barack Obama is a friend of the Corporation. This has been documented in a Atlantic monthly essat artilce by Ken Silverstien on Barack Obama.
Corporations use both Legal and illegal immigration as a way of transferring power away from American Workers to the Corporation.
I forgot to mention that Barack Obama’s top economic advisor-the one who assured the Canadians that “free” trade policy will continue apace is a corporation worshipping University of Chicago School economist who According to Counterpunch, Wall street is bankrolling Obama’s campaign.
The fact that Barack Obama has said that he won’t meet with Hasmas-the legitmate representative of the Palestinian people-is a very good indicator of what ot expect from an OBama presidency: a con tiuation of a pro-Isarael rejectionism policy which is the number one barrier to peace in the middle east. If Hamas is a terrorist organization, Israel is a much greater terrorist organization. Just count the number of dead bodies. For every person killed by Hamas, Israel kills three hundred(acording to Ralph Nader).
Barack Obama is more of the same. Just another sleazy megalamanic lusting for power,fame and fortune. These are the types that have appeal to liberals with a guilty racial concience. Unfortunately, it is the rest of us who will have to pay the price for the financially well- to -do liberal with a guilty racial concious. For more on this check out Steve Sailers blog and Vdare.com
One last thing, since Barck Obama has obviously sold his soul to THE Corporation, one should not be too suprised that Barack Obama fantically supports a massive increase in immigration-which would drive the US population up to a billion or more in 25 years. As far as the interests of the CORPORATION go-after all, these days the CORPORATION has the legal status of a super-human-the more the scab labor influx,the better. No need to worry about epic racial conflict within the borders of America and the destruction of America’s ecological life support system upon which the economy depends. Shear madness.
Every long term festering social,economic and environmnetal problem in America will increase in scale-and therefore remain unsolvable-if Baracl Obama is elected president of the United States.
Barack Obama’s politics are racial to the core…. right to the wick of his being.
Horace – it is a good place to remind people that the SCOTUS decision that supposedly granted personal rights to US Corporations was actually fraudulently summarized by the clerk managing the case. They didn’t really say that, but it became part of practical law due to the difficulty of digging into the entire text of the arguments. See for example “How a clerical error made corporations “people”” at http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/664, which is a great summary of what happened.
I think you are too hard on Obama, but he is compromised to some substantial degree like any conventional politician. Only Nader could be trusted to really stand up to corporations, but he’d split the vote and I don’t want to see that. Maybe Obama if elected, can appoint Nader to head the FTC.
AstroDyke says:
Are Chinese people not people of color in your mind? I could have sworn they make up an enormous percentage of UC Berkeley admissions (and several times their actual percentage in the CA population), and are routinely passed over in the Ivies because they get perfect scores …
Now, I wonder what the difference is, hmmm. Maybe whitey somehow discriminates in favor of the yellow man?
Perhaps we really should discuss the elephant in the room.
David Nataf and Neil B.
Thanks you so much for your detailed and kind replies. They really helped. I’m printing them out. I’ll post more later —
I listened to a more complete excerpt of the sermon from which Wrights 9/11 “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” comments are taken. The video clip that is being played is completely out of context. Wright is quoting a “white ambassador” in those comments, which is “faith footnote” to a sermon about how to respond to 9/11. In fact Wright is not advocating any blaming of anyone in the sermon, but rather calling on people to respond by reflecting on their own relationship with God. The sermon advocates reflection, not anger. The ‘faith footnote’ is merely a comment about how some have reacted with anger.
Yeah, below is a big excerpt from that Wright sermon. There’s a great discussion at http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behind-rev-jeremiah-wrights-911-sermon/. The sermon was delivered way back on 9/16/2001. Indeed, Wright was quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force. Peck was speaking on FOX News. Wright did not say that what happened was justified. The meaning of “chickens coming home to roost” means that poking at something can have blowback, not that the blowback was ethically valid. The people who claim that Wright considered it justified are either incompetent at analysis, or dishonest and focused on propaganda value:
“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”
“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.
“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.
“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.
“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.
“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.
“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.
“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.
“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”
Later he said the following:
“Maybe we need to declare war on AIDS. In five minutes the Congress found $40 billion to rebuild New York and the families that died in sudden death, do you think we can find the money to make medicine available for people who are dying a slow death? Maybe we need to declare war on the nation’s healthcare system that leaves the nation’s poor with no health coverage? Maybe we need to declare war on the mishandled educational system and provide quality education for everybody, every citizen, based on their ability to learn, not their ability to pay. This is a time for social transformation.”
I don’t think there’s much he or Barack should be apologizing for about that particular speech, although I didn’t like the GD America stuff the other time.
http://miaculpa.blogspot.com/2008/03/listen-up.html
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/21/16207/3114/363/481705
“One of the most controversial statements in this sermon was when he mentioned “chickens coming home to roost.”
He was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News. That’s what he told the congregation”.
Charley Reese on Obama:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese438.html
“My estimation of him went up, because I’m sick and tired of these weasels who avoid anything that their staff says might cause them to be a shade less popular. You want a real man with guts in the White House? Well, Obama fits the bill.”
Arun – a touch of synchronicity here?
The Indian tribes mentioened above used force and and terror,,,and in some cases outright genocide…against other ameridian tribes to secure space and resource. The Indians(Ameridians) were not our moral superoirs.
Whites won. Too bad. I suffer no White guilt over it. It doesn’y follow from this that Americans Indians should be treated badly.
Barck Obama would like to see the contiuation of post-1965 immigration policy because over time this policy will reduce White Americans to a racial minority. So clearly Barck Obama’s intetnios towards White Americans are quite nasty.
If he were elected president, Barck Obama would increase the scale of the currently intractable social,economic and environmental problems. Do you really think afirmmative action for hispanics ,jamaicans,nigerians,ghanians and other post-1965 demographic groups is a long term viable policy option? Complete nonsense.
Barck Obama in his orientation is 100 percent racial. Manifestly obvious.
Grady, two flubs there. First, you can’t honestly compare the encounter with native Americans to a legitimate conflict between national beligerants that was settled with an honorable treaty. Americans used subterfuge and sheer seizure much of the time, it wasn’t classical spoils of war. (However, an honest historian would admit that tribes supporting the British during the Revolution or the South during the WBTS did subject themselves to warned of consequences of loss – that isn’t talked about much. But did we reward the ones on the federal side either time? Not for long …)
Second, you have no right to proclaim “Barck Obama would like to see the [continuation] of post-1965 immigration policy because over time this policy will reduce White Americans to a racial minority.” That is a motivational claim, not a fact. Anything that lasted since 1965 clearly has a lot of fingerprints all over it, mostly from corporate America that wants to suppress wages. I would like to see strong support of border security, but who else would stand up to corporate America and do that right? Racial issues are a distance nth factor leading to support, perhaps among specific direct interest groups. Obama wouldn’t be any worse than the other contenders, and is likely to mellow the affirmative action issue not make it more strident. Your final sentence is manifestly outrageous, especially on a blog dedicated to scientific style thinking in every area.
How do I know I’m not NB?
🙂
Obama just picked up an endorsement from a conservative legal scholar, see at http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/03/23/endorsing-obama.aspx:
I usually fumble the italics HTML, but below is all quoted:
*
Endorsing Obama
Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights.
…
9/11 and the radical Islamic ideology that it represents is a continuing threat to our safety and the next president must have the honesty to recognize that it, as author Paul Berman has written, “draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe and with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined. . . .wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, then naïve observers might suppose.” Senator Obama needs to address this extremist movement with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America. Effective criticism of the incumbent for diverting us from this task is a good start, but it is incomplete without a forthright outline of a commitment to undertake, with international partners, the formation of a world-wide entity that will track, detain, prosecute, convict, punish, and thereby, stem radical Islam’s threat to civil order. I await Senator Obama’s more extended thinking upon this vital subject, as he accepts the nomination of his party and engages Senator McCain in the general campaign discussion to come.
Published Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:18 AM by Doug Kmiec
Filed under: Iraq, John McCain, Douglas W. Kmiec, Barack Obama, OLC, 9/11 plotters, speech, Roe, abortion, terrorism, rule of law
About Doug Kmiec
* Douglas W. Kmiec is Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, Professor Kmiec was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.
Obama’s calls for tolerance, now that he is on the receiving end of bigotry, would be more believable if he practised what he preached. However, it is hard to buy what he is selling, given the following story, quoted from various sources:
Given this, his latest speech is, to me, nothing more than a political speech motivated by cynical political ambitions. He is someone who will do what he thinks he needs to win. In particular, you can bet your ass he will not touch gays or gay issues with a ten foot pole during this election.
Obama is obviously full of shit. He’s a pollie, what do you expect? But it was a nice speech.
And he’s a liberal in the same way John McCain is a centrist.
It is a great speech.
Trouble is, it doesn’t tell us how to move on from the Bush/Clinton era of gotcha cherrypicking, base busing, and dumbing down. If Obama can’t figure out how to translate better and more honest arguments into wins, he’ll get ground down by the politics of the last two decades.
Simply put, Reverend Wright is a bigot. In this speech, it feels like Obama is trying to rationalize his disgusting rhetoric as somehow representative of a broader racism problem in America.
If someone is black, white, or green, spouting this sort of bile only reveals their internal prejudice. Wright is a bigot. Case closed.
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/03/rights-and-wrongs-of-reverend-wright.html
Well worth the time spent reading it.