Alas, I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.
I love this country. I don’t remember loving it or hoping more from it than today.
The kind of white resentment Obama is talking about here has been a problem for the Democratic Party for decades now notwithstanding the fact that you rarely see the party nominating African-Americans to run in majority white constituencies. What Obama is showing us here is that precisely because he’s black, he’s able to acknowledge and validate these resentments in a way that would be very difficult for a white liberal politician.
At any rate, I’d say things are back on track. The Wright business had opened up a vague sliver of hope for Hillary Clinton’s campaign — if they could produce a result in Pennsylvania that looked like a Wright-induced collapse in Obama’s white support, maybe they could convince superdelegates that he’s unelectable. After this speech, I don’t see it happening.
In no uncertain terms did Obama renounce — morally condemn — the hateful, anti-Semitic, anti-American and just plain bizarre rants of his pastor — "former pastor," as Obama now calls him. But he did not reject him. He refused to reject him. He is daring, in essence, his white liberal supporters to accept what Wright’s anger represents — a legacy of oppression — and daring the rest of white supporters to take a leap of faith him… and asking them to expand their minds a bit and see that Wright is preaching in a tradition that has a context that is directly related to the material and spiritual conditions of all Americans.
The sell will be easier for white liberals, I think. The speech was magnificently written. It was internally consistent with Obama apparently believes.
I do think that Obama’s speech was a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric. Politically, analytically and emotively, it hit many high notes. His acknowledgment of white working class resentments (busing) and about the perception that there’s been no racial progress, his willingness to stick by his friends, his grasp of history, his sense that our views of race are cramped and caricatured… all of that is something that even those who disagree with the substance of his speech, can, I think, appreciate.
It’s quite a speech: autobiographical, embracing complexity, and answering questions about Wright — whose most offensive words, he says, are beyond anything he’d heard in church — without ultimately disavowing him.
Throughout, he insists on things that you don’t get much of in politics: context and nuance.
Indeed, Obama could have given another speech. Shorter, to start. More focused on hope than on pain. More talk of tomorrow and less emphasis on the past. More dismissive of Wright and less insistent on the legitimacy of Wright’s experience, and the ubiquity of his thinking. He didn’t have to dwell on the black community’s frustration and the white community’s bigotry.
But this speech was something I didn’t expect: Honest. It was honest about Obama’s affection for Wright, even as it repudiated Wright’s comments. It was honest about the tragic history of race in America, even as it expressed faith in a redemptive future. It was honest about the resentment peddlers and racial charlatans who try and recast the increasing rarity of the American Dream as the consequence of ethnic competition rather than gross power imbalances. It was honest in its recognition that racial memory influences contemporary thought, honest in admitting that there’s anger in this country, and it’s justified, and that there’s fear in this country, and it’s real.
We’ll see. But that alone is a shock. Obama could have simply preached unity and forgiveness without recognizing the realities of anger and resentment. He could have done as Mitt Romney did, and sought to protect his political vulnerabilities by picking new enemies. Obama could have made this a speech about Fox News, and divisive commentators, and right wing talkshow hosts, and sleaze artists who need to be stopped. But he didn’t. He’s betting he can universalize this experience, too, and that he’ll find more votes in unity than in division. It is, at best, a gamble. But at least it’s an honest one.
Charles Murray, that guy who wrote the Bell Curve, and one of the few conservative chatterers who seemed to get it:
Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I’m concerned, 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….
One of my personal maxims has been that politicians will disappoint you. The ones you like will have personal failings, while the ones you detest will fail time and time again. With Senator Obama, for the first time in my life, I have watched a political leader who I don’t worry if he’ll be up to the task.
1.) I thought the nod at the conservative intellectual’s critique of welfare policy was very shrewd. As in: "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." Obama was essentially saying to conservative elites, "You can’t exactly be surprised when black pathologies seep out into the open. You’re the same people who said public policy had been nurturing those pathologies." I’m not sure conservatives will be won over by this, but it could make them stop and say, "Okay, good point."
2.) Even if you disagree with the logic of the speech, I think the basic emotional case was sound. It’s a case Obama often makes when he talks about race and his candidacy in general, but which he made pretty explicitly here:
The campaign for the Democratic nomination has already gripped the nation for two reasons: It offers either the first woman or the first African-American as the candidate of a major party, and it has been as close as the last Super Bowl. Now we have a third reason for our fascination: We have been asked to reflect in the most serious of ways about the role that race plays in the life of our country. I cannot recall any leader or potential leader in the last two or three decades asking us to do that. I hope we are up to the challenge. I do not believe–nor, from his speech, do I think that Obama believes–that to think seriously about race we have to vote for him. But I do think that when we address race, we ought to do it, not by running endless videos of people, black or white, who have said outrageous things but by finally having the honest conversation about race we keep promising ourselves–and keep postponing. Agree or disagree with Obama, I ask people who are less inspired by him that I am, but at least acknowledge that in this presidential candidate, we have a man of honor–and an honest man.
a speech unlike any delivered by a major political figure in modern American history.
No other presidential candidate in the past 40 years has managed to speak so much truth so eloquently at such a crucial juncture in his campaign as Barack Obama did today. And he did it by speaking about race, the most persistent source of hatred among us since America began.
as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney’s speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy’s famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.
I do think the problem Jeremiah Wright creates for Obama’s campaign remains unresolved, to some extent, since there was nothing Obama could say in a single speech that would undo the perception created by his long affiliation with Wright and his church - the perception that he’s only confronting what’s wrong with Wright’s style of black politics because the media narrative is forcing him too, and that when the spotlight isn’t on him, he’s more interested in fitting in and feeling comfortable than in, well, speaking truth to power. But by using the Wright controversy as an opportunity to play up their candidate’s strengths - as an orator, but more importantly as the rare politician who can deliver a thoughtful, nuanced speech and make you feel like he means it - the Obama campaign made some sweet-tasting lemonade out of some awfully sour lemons.
But Obama did not do the politically "smart" thing. He did the right thing. And that is why his campaign will weather this storm.
At the most basic level, Obama did what the media has failed to do. He presented Wright and Wright’s comments on U.S. domestic and foreign policies in context: the context of the African-American religious experience, the context of the candidate’s connection to the church and, above all, the context of this country’s unresolved experience of what Obama correctly refers to as "the original sin" of the American experiment — human bondage — and its legacy.
The speech was masterful in this regard. Obama took the time to explore questions that rarely if ever get a fair hearing in American politics.
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