“A More Perfect Union”

“A More Perfect Union” — Obama on race

March 18th, 2008 · No Comments

Earlier today, Barack Obama delivered the most direct, sophisticated, intellectually and emotionally honest, and important speech about race in America of any politician in generations.

Rather than try to paste over and “transcend” the issue of race, Obama has chosen to address it head-on, articulating and engaging with the legitimate frustrations, resentments, and hopes of both blacks and whites–as well as Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans–and acknowledging the complexity of an issue we have avoided publicly discussing in any meaningful way for too long:

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.”

The only downside I can see to this speech is that its construction and sophistication may defy easy summary and division into soubdbites for the evening news. My own attempts at excerpting and summarizing quickly made it clear to me that I would have ended up writing a post almost as long as the speech itself.

I may have more to say about it later, but for now I encourage you to watch the speech in its entirety:

If you prefer to read it, the prepared text of the speech is available here.

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