In his eloquent 37-minute speech, "A More Perfect Union," Sen. Barack Obama sought to address head-on the nuances and complexities of race in America. Sadly, much of the media are not taking up his challenge for a serious discourse on race; they are still obsessed with the more superficial and incendiary aspects of the topic.

Some of the comments of Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are beyond the pale. But are they really any more outrageous--or any more significant--than the words of some notable ministers on the political right?

On September 13, 2001--just two days after the terrorist attacks and several days before Wright blamed US foreign policy for 9/11--Rev. Jerry Falwell declared on The 700 Club that God had allowed "the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

"I really believe," said Falwell, "that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way--all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

What did the show's host, former Republican presidential candidate Rev. Pat Robertson say in response to such shameful and offensive words, which were spoken as the wreckage of the Twin Towers still smoldered? "Well, I totally concur."

Dwelling on incendiary words spoken years ago by preachers with large followings is a distraction from the real problems at hand. And one of our deepest, longstanding problems concerns race relations.

The Jamestown settlement was established in 1607 by people escaping religious persecution. Their first slaves arrived in 1610. The United States of America was founded as a republic, with slavery. This fundamental contradiction has haunted our nation, from the three-fifth's compromise at Philadelphia in 1787, to Dred Scott and the cataclysm of the Civil War, to the century of Jim Crow, America's own apartheid.

The civil rights legislation that ended state-sponsored racial discrimination in America was passed only four decades ago. Although rarely talked about in "polite company," the legacy of slavery and racism still impacts on American politics and society.

Obama's speech is one of the most significant political addresses in modern American history. He has sought to tear down the veil of "political correctness" that has made it difficult if not impossible to have an honest and earnest discourse on race.

I grew up hearing tales about America's racial divide from both sides of my family. My father and his siblings were born and raised in the segregated South. My uncle Seymour was a rabbi with a pulpit in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s. He had a cordial relationship with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., based on their common interests as clergy. Uncle Seymour spoke several times at King's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and King asked Seymour to teach him to read Hebrew.

Racial tensions in Montgomery reached a peak in 1955. The black lady who cleaned my uncle's house and helped my aunt with the kids refused to ride the bus. Seymour, sympathetic to the bus boycott, would drive her back and forth from her "colored" neighborhood to his home each day. His car was vandalized on several occasions with the words "N-lover" painted on it, and he took to carrying a gun for protection.

My mother came to America as a Jewish refugee from Egypt, arriving in Texas in 1957. In Cairo, religious identity mattered a great deal but color was of little significance, as Egyptians ranged the spectrum of skin pigmentation.

Things were different in Texas. Taking the bus one day in Houston shortly after her arrival, my mother didn't see any open seats at the front, so she made her way to an empty seat at the back of the bus. The white bus driver stopped the vehicle and approached her. "You can't sit here," he told her. "This section is for coloreds only."

Such formally institutionalized racism no longer exists. As Obama noted when he chided his pastor, America is not static.

But racist attitudes did not end with the civil rights movement. When I was growing up in West Los Angeles in the 1970s, I had black friends in school and didn't really think about race. Then we moved to the San Fernando Valley and, for the first time, I encountered irrational hatred toward blacks. I heard the n-word spewed by some of my peers, who joked about "blowing up" the buses that transported black kids to our junior high school.

Today I am a (Jewish) political science professor teaching at a Catholic liberal arts college with a student body that is about 20% African-American. From what I've seen of this generation of students, I think many younger Americans are able to move past the racial animosities that divided previous generations. This is one reason why the Illinois senator has so much appeal for younger voters.

Obama erred by lumping all "whites" together into a single, monolithic category. Even he is susceptible to stereotyping. But he is right that it is time for a national conversation about race.

Americans of all racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds have at some point in their histories experienced negative stereotyping, fear and perhaps even violence. Thus if we want to move beyond just watching old video clips ad nauseam and instead do the hard work of engaging in dialogue that is honest and substantive, the conversations will be uncomfortable and perhaps even painful in the beginning. But if we truly aspire to become "a more perfect union," the effort will be worth it.

Cross-posted from RealClearPolitics.com

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Pierre Atlas

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