American Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAmerican Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAs we know, Senator Obama is set to speak today at 10:15 on race and his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his recently revealed comments. I'll live blog on the coverage of his speech with additional posts on this thread.
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There are times in every generation (15-30 year span) when a clear thinker arises to speak the truth and call their generation to action for the betterment of all who draw breath. I firmly believe we have witnessed such an event today with Obama's address to the people. I came along during the late 50's and early 60's and both John F. Kennedy and Martin L. King stirred the souls and ignited the hopes and dreams of my generation. There are most definitely others who have inspired the multitudes. For the generations of this day, Obama sets the standard. Now, the challenge has been spoken, will we as Americans arise to the challenge and answer the call to greatness? We can start by getting the news pundits, analysts, and reporters to move on to the rest of the speech, encourage all viewers, listeners, and readers to act and do what they can, where they stand to bring about a more perfect union. I suspect someone will do a statistic on the number of times the Rev. Wright snippets have aired during the week. Care to take a guess at the number? I was watching AC 360 and must have counted 25 reruns of the Rev. Wright views on America. Enough already! Wow, so many thoughts triggered by the speech. More later.
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G. A. Borden, II
Something I've noticed about the top all-day news programs: as the race turns more to race, they're dusting off their formerly benched or back-watered Black correspondents. I notice that something was happening months ago on a different topic--immigration. Then, I saw more Latino commentators on one place than I'd ever seen. One show on race in the race late last year, had an athlete, an entertainer and a weather person talking about race in the political race. They were all Black and seemed a little out of their depth.
One would hope that the inclusion of a wider variety of people of color would continue long after the debates are over and the last of the confetti has flown.
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Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com
Family members know that I was in attendance at the Obama town hall meeting this past weekend and have been ringing me up to find out my take on it all. One was my brother, Rodney who worried that Obama wasn't "for real." Cynical, he peppered me with questions to try to find out the particulars of Saturday's speech and discussion (glad I took extensive notes) and didn't seem satisfied that I'd given him enough--there was something missing for him.
Rodney, like many I've spoken with, are frustrated and tired about the divisiveness of our political process and the runaway surrogates and supporters who are making it difficult to parse their beliefs from those of the candidates (and the pundits who can't seem to get enough of their antics).
Today, he called me from Atlanta and spoke to me at length while driving back home to the burbs from the city. He'd heard the speech on the radio and commented:"He's not a punk. He's got a set of balls. He didn't sellout his pastor--his friend--even if it cost him the election. This turned it around for me."
Not a punk? I agree, Rodney. Now, let's see what Senators McCain and Clinton say.
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Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com
Hmmmm . . . This stinks real bad! I can't help but feel that despite an overwhelmingly outstanding speech, that people in this country heard blah, blah, blah . . . he is still a "nigga."
Amazingly, each crab in the barrel (supporters, pundits, media, ect.) seeking to promote Obama, keeps on pulling this transcending leader down. I take offense that Obama has to discern on a daily basis whether he is too black and/or black enough. But hey, perhaps the devil we know is better than the devil that lies within us . . . and why Hillary is now poised to steal victory out of the jaws of defeat.
The more Obama is forced to say I am not "that kind of Black man" the more people will be convinced that he is hiding his Black Panther Action Figure and decorder ring under his pillow at night!
What did his speech achieve? More than "mend it, don't end it." Does Hillary have a plan or message that brings people together . . . Not! Perhaps DuBois was prophetic when he wrote in The Souls of Black Folks, that he had nothing to say when people asked "how does it feel to be a problem?" And yet, Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Ferguson have regained the political low ground as Obama is forced by circumstance to answer that distructive and insidious question.
How many of us are bold enough to Stand, and avoid the divisive and "crabs in the barrel" politics. Too many have not a word!
Once in a generation--if we are lucky--someone comes along who is transformational. If there was previously any question of his ability to be that transformational figure, Obama's speech has answered it.
Obviously, I did not listen with the same cultural "ears" that Lalita did. Instead, I came to the speech as a woman who was once a little Jewish girl growing up in Anderson, Indiana--a factory town where the few Jews (30 of us, as I recall, including children)were looked upon with distrust and viewed as alien. I also came to the speech as a woman who was often the "first woman who..." and I am bone tired of identity politics, tired of politicians (yes, Hillary, you) playing the "victim" card, and TIRED of everyone who wants to emphasize what separates Americans rather than what unites us.
I just hope America will listen to Barack Obama, and elect a President who will focus upon making America what this nation can be--IF we live up to our own aspirations and constitutional philosophy.
Sheila Kennedy
Here's the text of Senator Obama's speech as prepared for delivery...
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
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.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
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.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
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. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
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.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
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.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
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.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
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.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
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 politicia ns, 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 committ ed; 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.
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.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
________
Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com
I urge you to listen to the speech yourself and form your own opinions. Please be sure to post those thoughts here. Give a few minutes to find the text of his speech. Look for it in a separate post.
________
Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com
(Side note: Let me start by saying plainly that I was pretty afraid for Senator Obama. Pundits were pronouncing his candidacy dead or in need of serious life support.)
Senator Obama began by discussing the original stain of slavery--our country's Original Sin--which was stronger than the bravery encoded in the Constitution.
He discussed his family's diversity with great candor, including his white mother and grandparents and his Indonesian-American sister. What struck me was that his talked about his father as a Black man and his mother, white. Not his father's Africanness. He spoke about how the pundits at first said he wasn't "Black enough" and now how he may be "too Black." At the same time, he got me in the heart when he spoke about how even in the Black community, we can sometimes shun those of us who work to achieve, calling them "too white" like it's a disease. I've experienced this, and even now, laughingly call myself "The whitest little Black woman, ever."
He discussed his primary and caucus wins in some of the whitest areas of the nation and how the press has worked to scour every election result for evidence to support their belief that Blacks will vote their color, neglecting to look through the same prism at whites, expecially, white males for evidence that they are robotically voting for McCain because of his pigment and plumbing.
He spoke on how many surrogates and pundits have begun leaving their listeners with the notion that his candidacy is an exercise of affirmative action or a liberal "feel-good" attempt at "racial reconciliation on the cheap," reducing his political adherants to shameless posers.
He talked at length about his former pastor. Here's where I found myself listening at first though my own frustrations with the Black pastorate--a frustration that had me leave the Church, tearfully, when I was 25, after yet another screed against whites and feminists from a pastor who did very little good and used the church as a dating service. Obama addressed how the comments of his former pastor could be seen to widen the racial divide and how he's already condemned those statements what caused such "controversy and pain." He addressed whether he was present when those comments were made, whether he'd heard any of them and whether he'd addressed his strong disagreement--all "yes." He pointed out that the failing of his former pastor and current friend is that he operates as if white racism were endemic, though our issues with the Middle East, healthcare, schools and the economy effect us all (and are the result of bad policy--not bad people). He acknowledged that there are those for whom his statements today will not be enough (as I edit this, I'm listening to Pat Robertson, who said nothing about the clearly racist tenents of the Mormon faith, or about Billy Graham's bigotry, or Haggee's anti-catholicism or...) continue to grind his axe on Obama.
He pointed out that his former pastor was reduced from almost 40 years of good works to two minutes of sound bites, saying that if all he knew about Reverend Wright came from those sound bites, he's have reacted the same way that many in the nation have, but went on to say that this isn't all he knows about the man. Wright served his country as a US Marine (in a time when, upon his return, he had less rights than others GI's), he introduced Obama to Christianity, and over 30 years has housed the homeless and ministered to forgotten prisoners and AIDS patients in the most troubled part of the inner city.
He read from his book, The Audacity of Hope, about his first experience in that church--how those stories of hope and survival being voiced at thousands of Black churches spoke to the triumph of a people over adversity and pain. He said that the issues addressed in that church were "Black and more than Black" and that in the process of holding church the members of the congregation were "reclaiming (their) memories--memories that we didn't need to feel ashamed about." He talked about how Trinity's services were full of dancing, clapping screaming, shouting and bawdy humor. True enough. I remember taking friends from college to my church one fine Sunday. When one woman "Got Happy"--which seemed oxymoronic given how loudly she was crying out a life of pain--and began shaking and screaming, one of my friends grabbed me and turned me to him yelling "Lalita, call an ambulance." He couldn't understand why we all continued to sing while she fell to the ground in a boneless heap. We talked for hours that day and they concluded that there was just something different in the Black cultural DNA than that of whites.
Barack Obama made me proud. He refused to distance himself from the man while denouncing the message. "He's been like family to me," he said and went on to describe how he refused to denounce and shun his white grandmother who'd used racial and ethnic epithets in his presence and admitted to having a bigoted belief that Black men would hurt her.
He doesn't disown family and Wright has been as much family to him as his grandmother.
My uncle, a pastor--I love him. He and I were raised as age mates together at a time when I lived with my grandmother and great grandmother over an hour away from my working mother. I spent every weekday with them and every weekend with her. He and the other children from that household were my entire world. Still, now my uncle's said things about Hispanics and gays that goes through me like a spear and don't seem to bear much resemblance with the loving man I've come to know all my life. I've had to tell him that these comments aren't welcome in my house (or in my hearing), while at the same time making sure that he knows that he is very welcome here. I will never disown him: Love doesn't work like that (as I know my gay friends can attest). I can't even hope to make a difference with him if I and others who don't share his views don't talk with him about them.
He pointed out that "we can't ignore race" any more than we can continue to "amplify the negatives on race." It's complex--an issue that we've never, as Obama rightly pointed out fully addressed.
He asked us how we got here, quoting William Falkner who said "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact it isn't even dead." He cited the corrosive effects of slavery and Jim Crow that are still apparent in "separate and inferior schools;" a history or property rights and contract violations that can be seen in the current home loan debacle which saw a Blacks, oddly, being steered to highly risky, non-convential loans even though they qualified for less expensive loans; the early poor racial record of unions; the wealth and income gap where equal work still doesn't equal equal pay (even in our colleges and universities where one would they all those smart people know better); the destructive effects of not being able to provide for one's family (particularly for Black men) and the lack of basic services (parks, garbage, police enforcement) that creates a cycle of dispair and violence,
He spoke about how many simply didn't make it, ceding to defeat, and how this legacy has been passed on as part of the interconnected network of conversation in the Black community. He discussed how Reverend Wright and others came of age as we approached the nadir of post Reconstruction racial intolerance. Reverend Wright, though he didn't succumb to the dispair, did succumb to the bitterness and vituperativeness that this experience engendered in so many of his generation. If you want to hear it, go, as Obama says, to any barber or beauty shop and, after your presence faces as an oddity, you can hear our "kitchen table conversation" which includes fears that Obama is a martyr just waiting for the inevitable bullet. He points out that what's surprising is how surprised people, especially whites, are that these feelings are still present in our cultural dialogue to any degree.
He discussed our complicity in being neglectful in "forging the alliances needed for real change" and in a series of statements that I've been wishing to hear since I was an Affirmative Action officer and heard the most crushing white commentary on Black accomplishment, voiced how there is similar--real and similar--anger in the white community that isn't caught on tape, but voiced at dinner tables across America particularly as whites have collapsed Affirmative Action with "unqualified and still unequal" (funny how poor enforcement of the law by white managers and HR operatives is blamed on the victim) or have seen jobs go to those who don't look like their communities. He also pointed out that now the jobs are simply leaving our shores and no one's getting them. "My dreams don't come at your expense." Brilliant and true.
He spoke about a generation of political discourse that has used the spector of racial over-entitlement as a bogeyman to scare whites who are anxious about their futures into extreme political views. He pointed out that we can't wish these ills away on either side without acknowledging them and trying to understand how someone could feel that way or addressing the real cuplrit: short-term greed, special interests and powerful, monied lobbys.
He said that we're in "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years" and that we have no choice but to move beyond our racial wounds--that we can "write our own destiny."
Reverend Wright, he said, failed in conjoining Black self-help with a static view of white racism, failing to see how Obama's candidacy was evidence of a change in the very fabric of the nation.
"We've seen that American can change. That's the true genius of this nation." That's true. This is the genius of America and the true genius of the human race. Like the nation, my hope is that people I love--people like my uncle--can change, laying down and healing the anger and disappointment in his life that's lead him to lash out at people who have done him no real harm. Still, his fears can't be just dismissed as "all in his mind" any more than the fears of many other Blacks can't be offhandedly ignored. Racism is real. Bigotry is real as is the now amorphous, generalized fear of economic loss we're now experiencing. And the pain they leave people with are real and can span generations. We forget that, in celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, we are celebrating a people who were initially "niggerized" when they came as immigrants to this country. The Irish were depicted as dark skinned monkeys and suffered almost the exact same kinds of virulent discrimination faced by Blacks. Ask what "nick, nack Paddy whacK" really refers to or what a Paddy wagon is. I'll give you that one: it was originally coined by white American cops for the vehicle they went into the Irish community to pick up those who resisted being rousted. Where the Irish succeeded so brilliantly was in that they found that "common stake" Obama discussed. They were embraced into the fabric of the nation and we can scarcely remember how even some nursery rhymes still have encoded in them our early hatred of those from the Emerald Isles.
He pointed out that this entire matter can be a distraction--another gaff by a supporter--that takes us away from the reality of our situation: our schools are crumbling and failing our children, we're getting sicker with less resources to get well, our jobs are leaving our shores and wer're in a wrong-headed war that's destroying centuries of goodwill that we've emassed. We can say "not this time" to those distractions.
I truly hope we do.
________
Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com
PS: Hat tip to Ray who encouraged me, now that my brain's cleared a bit, to clean up this post (no spell checker in our blog package)!
I just watched one of the most inspired speeches I have heard in my lifetime. The turmoil and divisivness of recent days in the campaign were really a poor attempt to talk around the obvious issues of race and gender.
I believe this speech to be a turning point in confronting the lack of a true public discource on the reality of conditions in America and the need to take action in this generation.
Too many people have been sitting on the sidelines. Too many people think affirmative action fixed "it". Too many people have been resigned about the lack of opportunity and too many people have been reactionary to the threats of scarcity underlined in the debate on immigration and off shoring of jobs.
THANK YOU Barack Obama, THANK YOU!
While listening to this speech today I could feel the emotions of past wrongs welling up in me.
We have become numb to pain and suffering and we need to restore our connections as human beings.
We can no longer accept the level of poverty in the US. We can no longer accept poor education, we can no longer accept a lack of responsibility for our fellow human beings, whether they look like us or not, whether they live here in America or not.
We are a global human family.
The genocide in Darfur needs to end. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq need rational approaches to the human suffering of civilians deemed "collateral damage".
THANK YOU Barack Obama, Thank you for your courage and yes Audacity of HOPE!
Many of you have been wondering why I've been silent on the issue of Obama supporter Jeremiah Wright's comments. Some of you have written directly to me like Ray who wrote:
I have been jousting with people for a couple of days now over the Rev. Wright videos.
From my perspective the vast majority of non-African Americans haven’t got a clue about the culture, energy and anger that the Reverend was expressing in these few sermons that the media has used to characterize a well respected minister over a 30 year career.
The whole guilt by association argument doesn’t hold any water, but I have been bombarded by concerned supporters. In fact this morning one of my technical professional co-workers acknowledged to me this morning that watching and listening to the videos actually brought her to tears out of anguish over such caustic statements, in her perspective.
From my view, as I acknowledged above, white America can only project what they think they know about Afro-centric churches like the Reverend Wrights. Having grown up in a country where racial epithets against blacks, Jews, and anyone else this is different is ingrained I have personally been brought to the point of verbally striking out against small minded racists and bigots.
I really had no issues, personally with the Reverend’s controversial sermons and I would really like to hear some of his typical sermons expressing commitment to social justice, family and faith.What does Lalita think about all this furor.
First, I don't want to excuse Reverend Wright's comments anymore than Geraldine Ferraro's, Bill Clinton's or anyone else's.
What I want people consider is this: This is a great boon to Barack Obama. We're in a country where race and gender matters. Unfortunately, this campaign has not called the candidates to step up strongly to frame what could have been a powerful conversation about the reality of race and gender as they impac the very issues they are stumping on. Race and gender meet to create more brutal poverty, more intense and intractible illness (heart disease, diabetes and stroke as the poor purchase cheaper foods with poorer ingredients and more fattening fillers), lower wages (Native and Hispanic women women make less than half what a similarly situated white man makes...and over a quarter on the dollar less than a similarly situated white woman brings home.
Trouble is, they've shyed away from it like the stink on a rotting turkey.
Bill Clinton is known for having Reverend Jesse Jackson as a spiritual advisor to his campaign, even after his unfortunate Hymie-town comments (referring to Jewish areas of New York). Richard Nixon sidled up to Billy Graham and have been heard in released recordings saying things about Jewish people, journalists in particular, that are chilling. Recently, Reverend Haggee, who has been cheek by jowl with Senator McCain, has had comments about the Catholic Church as the "Great Whore" become known.
The difference is: Barack Obama is Black.
Now, here's the other thing, I have considered regarding this powerful church that Oprah Winfrey had attended. It's done quite a bit of good in a area of Chicago that, when the church started, no one in their right minds wanted to set foot in. I don't want to take away anything from the good this church or this man has done.
There's just something about the Black church. Watching as the Black pastorate tries to (1) get on the air and (2) tries to distance itself from these kinds of issues, I find myself increasingly frosted. Most Black churches are bulwarks against some of the very worst discrimination we have faced both during slavery and throughout American apartheid. Expression in our churches has been tightly controlled and the messages screened by police and other officials to ensure that they didn't incite "our good Negroes," which I saw for myself as a very young girl in the sixties. When I desegrated the Lafayette School System along with one or two other children (who all attended different elementary schools) the church was the only thing aside from our parents that saved us from the daily onslaught of villification by our peers and the rampant mistreatment by the teachers. At the same time, that same church teaches that
Church after church, I heard variations of these messages--some said with greater elequence and other times more bladly. All of which is inexcusable. All of it.
At the same time, the Black pastorate is quite a different thing in the Black Church and in the white ones. Black churches haven been called on to take care of a host of social and political ills that just aren't addressed in the white church. The church was birthed in political and social activism. Even Dr. Martin King had a very different oratory in white audiences than in Black ones.
Let's see what Senator Obama says.
________
Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com/
http://totalteam.blogspot.com/
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