Obama's speech on CNN is pretty incredible

[Tossica]

Yeah, I think it's a very significant speech. Very powerful.

[Jay]

Linkage?

[Arlos]

Here's a Time Magazine commentary on the speech. Haven't found the speech itself yet.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... nn-partner

If the review is accurate, it's another example of why I've gotten to like the man. He refuses to act like a typical politician of recent years, and instead talks to people as if they're adults, and capable of understanding more than black & white. Furthermore, as the article notes, he asks something of people, not promises them things, which is exactly one of the things I most liked about what I read about Kennedy, with the whole "ask not, etc." speech. I definitely look forward to actually hearing the speech in its entirety.

-Arlos

[KaiineTN]

Eh, the "ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country" can put the wrong idea in people's heads. When a country is represented by a government, it is essentially saying don't ask what the government can do for you, ask what you can do for the government, yet the government exists to serve the people and the country. We are its masters. I just think that line of thought is a dangerous road to be on because it seems to encourage the idea that we owe something to our country, to our government, and if the people as a whole accept that, it becomes all too easy for the government to abuse and exploit, and for people to lose motivation/hope for changing things.

[Arlos]

Speech, including transcript can be located here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/

Here's the heart of the speech. Some awesome stuff, I think.

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 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.

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 the 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.

-Arlos

[Jay]

If I could vote for him twice I would. Great speech.

[Narrock]

He's just covering his ass. There's video footage of him nodding in agreement while sitting in the pews during one of "Reverend" Wright's rantings. And I can't believe what a fucking loser he is for throwing his grandmother under the bus like that... the woman that loves him and he supposedly loves. lol too much.

[Arlos]

Care to provide a link to said video? Last I heard, the only attempt to link him to one of the Youtube speaches was completely debunked, when Obama's campaign showed that Obama was in Florida at the time the sermon happened. Completely fabricated story that went out in a NY Times opinion column, that was completely retracted within 24 hours.

As for his grandmother, with all due respect, I think you missed the point he was trying to make. The point is that people we love or are associated with do not necessarily hold the same beliefs as we do. So it is entirely possible to be friends with, or even related to someone whose has negative beliefs without ever subscribing to those beliefs ourselves.

My own grandmother, who I loved dearly, and who gave me some of my best memories as a kid when she and my grandfather took me fishing in Montana, definitely had some bigoted beliefs on some subjects. Doesn't mean I didn't love my grandmother, but nor does it mean that just because she is important to me and I loved her that I in any way agreed with or followed those beliefs.

That's the point. People are more than 1-dimensional stereotypes. They may in many ways be people we admire and look up to and care deeply about, but in others believe or do things that we completely disagree with. Unfortunately you can't split someone up onto their component aspects, you have to take the good with the bad. That was Obama's point with respect to his Minister. Certainly Obama abhorred and repudiated some of what he'd said, Obama made that very clear today and over the last couple weeks. But at the same time, there is more to his minister than those beliefs; that in other areas he is kind, generous, etc.

-Arlos

[Jay]

Funny story but I was out with my friend Rick (Caladore) and his mom and great grandmother at Walmart and there's a black lady in line in front of us.

Rick's great grandma says "Well ain't that the cutest nigger baby I done ever seen?"

I was like oh shit lol. Rick's mom goes on to explain how great grandma meant no harm it's just that that was acceptable back in her time and she doesn't know better.

Rick's great grandmother chimes in again, "Oh I'm sorry about that. I just remembered yall don't like being called niggers no more. Yall like being called Afri-nigger-mericans now right? Well I meant no offense. You have a cute Afri-nigger-merican baby."

I had to hold the laughter in like explosive diahrea but when I got home oh man...

[Haylo]

There isn't anything funny about that story. The lady with the baby did well to not around and smack the kindly ole great grandma. Clearly that woman knew what she was saying wasn't acceptable in any way. Using her age as an excuse is just lame. Even if the great-grandmother was 100 she's been around long enough to know that calling a baby "a cute little nigger" is not cool.

[Jay]

Trust me she had no idea. NO idea. Honestly, that lady coulda snapped or been annoyed or even offended but she chuckled and said it was ok with a smile. If you knew Rick's great granny you'd know there isn't a malicious bone in her body. Sure, call me an asshole all you want for thinking it was funny but it coulda been a jewish kid, asian kid or mexican kid with their (dis)respective derogatory names and I still woulda laughed. Only thing she is guilty of is being sheltered and ignorant, and not in the asshole way but the not knowing way.

[Tikker]

i was at a sunset ceremony at the RCMP academy, and the new recruits were marching and i hear an old woman say "oh they let darkies in now"

[Gypsiyee]

He's just covering his ass. There's video footage of him nodding in agreement while sitting in the pews during one of "Reverend" Wright's rantings. And I can't believe what a fucking loser he is for throwing his grandmother under the bus like that... the woman that loves him and he supposedly loves. lol too much.

Try not to dislike him just for the sake of disliking him and look at the words he speaks objectively. He's addressing things that most people think but never say, and he's addressing both sides of the fence - this isn't a speech defending himself, this is a speech to instill understanding and a speech that everyone can relate to somewhere. He's able to understand where the angst comes from as a third party looking into the conflict, able to separate himself from leaning to one side or the other, and there aren't a lot of people who can do that, much less presidential candidates who can. The world is full of bias, politics even moreso, and if this is a cover his ass speech, well it's a whole fuck of a lot better than the current president ever granted us with his own cover my ass speeches. He actually acknowledges that he isn't perfect, and that alone speaks volumes.

The intelligence, composure, diplomacy, and respect that Obama carries himself with is just inspiring after 8 years of 'well uh, you know, we'll uh, we'll do what we need to, and uh, we'll bomb those guys if we need to, and uh, we'll get it done, go america!'

[Jay]

He's just covering his ass. There's video footage of him nodding in agreement while sitting in the pews during one of "Reverend" Wright's rantings. And I can't believe what a fucking loser he is for throwing his grandmother under the bus like that... the woman that loves him and he supposedly loves. lol too much.

Try not to dislike him just for the sake of disliking him and look at the words he speaks objectively. He's addressing things that most people think but never say, and he's addressing both sides of the fence - this isn't a speech defending himself, this is a speech to instill understanding and a speech that everyone can relate to somewhere. He's able to understand where the angst comes from as a third party looking into the conflict, able to separate himself from leaning to one side or the other, and there aren't a lot of people who can do that, much less presidential candidates who can. The world is full of bias, politics even moreso, and if this is a cover his ass speech, well it's a whole fuck of a lot better than the current president ever granted us with his own cover my ass speeches. He actually acknowledges that he isn't perfect, and that alone speaks volumes.

The intelligence, composure, diplomacy, and respect that Obama carries himself with is just inspiring after 8 years of 'well uh, you know, we'll uh, we'll do what we need to, and uh, we'll bomb those guys if we need to, and uh, we'll get it done, go america!'

Honestly it's a pretty moving speech regardless of what administration we've been living through. Call me simple but I really like the fact he's not just saying "I will do this that and the other for you" but he's instead actually placing some of the responsibility of this country and it's condition back in the hands of the people. Yes it's been done before with the "do unto others bit" but honestly it reminds me that everyone is so busy complaining about why isn't being done for us instead of just going out and making it happen.

[Gaazy]

Jay, my mamaw was the exact same way. She'd say stuff like that, and ive even heard her say the exact same "cute nigger baby" comment as that before. She never meant any hate or anything by it, thats just the way they are used to talkin where my families from (Mcdowell county, WV. Look it up, one of the poorest counties in the nation. Pretty much a third world area rofl). Those old folks are gonna say what they want, when they want, and they're set in their ways.

[Naethyn]

Haha saw this on digg. The Onion's take

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bl ... for_change

[Arlos]

I liked how Jon Stewart put it last night: For the first time in a very long time, if ever, a major presidential candidate had a speech about race in which he talked to his audience as if they were adults.

No falsely simplistic good/bad, black/white, etc dichotomies. No meaningless platitudes. It treated a complex issue AS a complex issue, and for the first time that I can remember, agreed that all sides had justification for their anger. He's right, too, if we keep ignoring the problem, trying to over-simplify it, or listen to only one side, we're never going to get anywhere, and it will continue to BE a problem forever.

So refreshing to hear ANY speech that treat its audience as adults, instead of kiddie jingoistic false bravado "I'm the decider!" crap.

-Arlos

[Gypsiyee]

I loved this summary of obama's speech, so I thought I'd share it:

DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN






A Thinking Man's Speech
March 21, 2008
I thought Barack Obama's speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that's what he wanted, and this is rare.

It seemed to me as honest a speech as one in his position could give within the limits imposed by politics. As such it was a contribution. We'll see if it was a success. The blowhard guild, proud member since 2000, praised it, and, in the biggest compliment, cable news shows came out of the speech not with jokes or jaded insiderism, but with thought. They started talking, pundits left and right, black and white, about what they'd experienced of race in America. It was kind of wonderful. I thought, Go, America, go, go.


You know what Mr. Obama said. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was wrong. His sermons were "incendiary," and they "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." Mr. Obama admitted that if all he knew of Mr. Wright were what he saw on the "endless loop . . . of YouTube," he wouldn't like him either. But he's known him 20 years as a man who taught him Christian faith, helped the poor, served as a Marine, and leads a community helping the homeless, needy and sick. "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me." He would not renounce their friendship.

Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too.

This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit. It is also true the particular whites Obama chose to paint -- ethnic, middle class -- are precisely the voters he needs to draw in Pennsylvania. It was strategically clever. But as one who witnessed busing in Boston first hand, and whose memories of those days can still bring tears, I was glad for his admission that busing was experienced as an injustice by the white working class. Next step: admitting it was an injustice, period.

* * *

The primary rhetorical virtue of the speech can be found in two words, endemic and Faulkner. Endemic is the kind of word political consultants don't let politicians use because 72% of Americans don't understand it. This lowest-common-denominator thinking, based on dizzy polling, has long degraded American discourse. When Obama said Mr. Wright wrongly encouraged "a view that sees white racism as endemic," everyone understood. Because they're not, actually, stupid. As for Faulkner -- well, this was an American politician quoting William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." This is a thought, an interesting one, which means most current politicians would never share it.

The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.

Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line -- "And families in Michigan matter!" or "What I stand for is affordable quality health care!" -- and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.

Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said.

If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they'd get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don't write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.

They should try it.

* * *

Here's what didn't work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn't summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak?

This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has -- the fear one has, actually -- that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. They are bright, accomplished, decent, they know all about the yuppie experience, the buppie experience, Ivy League ways, networking. But they bring along with all this -- perhaps defensively, to keep their ideological views from being refuted by the evidence of their own lives, or so as not to be embarrassed about how nice fame, success, and power are -- habitual reversions to how tough it is to be in America, and to be black in America, and how everyone since the Reagan days has been dying of nothing to eat, and of exploding untreated diseases. America is always coming to them on crutches.

But most people didn't experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn't that way. Do the Obamas know it?

This is a lot of baggage to bring into the Executive Mansion.

Still, it was a good speech, and a serious one. I don't know if it will help him. We're in uncharted territory. We've never had a major-party presidential front-runner who is black, or rather black and white, who has given such an address. We don't know if more voters will be alienated by Mr. Wright than will be impressed by the speech about Mr. Wright. We don't know if voters will welcome a meditation on race. My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.

[Minrott]

I watched the speech. It was on before Heller.

I fell asleep.

Guess I'm just your typical white person.

[Gypsiyee]

Guess I'm just your typical white person.

no, just your typical republican

honestly Min, are you serious? turn off fox news.

[Minrott]

Really, all I watch is CNN. Lou Dobbs is my fucking hero, except for some of his populist economic beliefs. I don't even get Fox News

[Gypsiyee]

Well, by your response taking 3 words out of context and considering Fox had nothing better to do but dissect those 3 words into oblivion, I'm sure you understand my assumption that you do o.O

[Minrott]

I've seen none of this dissection. It was however about the only thing I could retain from a speech that said nothing, and did nothing. I've taken it out of context because I find it amusing, that an atypical black person would use that kind of terminology in the speech that was supposed to explain his connections with an obviously racist individual. I hope that we can change our national perspective on race, but I don't have the audacity to think Obama is the one to do it.

[Gypsiyee]

I've seen none of this dissection. It was however about the only thing I could retain from a speech that said nothing, and did nothing. I've taken it out of context because I find it amusing, that an atypical black person would use that kind of terminology in the speech that was supposed to explain his connections with an obviously racist individual. I hope that we can change our national perspective on race, but I don't have the audacity to think Obama is the one to do it.

well if you don't have fox news, it would be safely assumed that you haven't seen the dissection, ya?

what's amusing to me, however, is that it's the only thing you retain from the speech when that line wasn't even delivered in the speech, but in a response to a radio host about the speech.

In fact, since your sources are completely off, here is the direct quote to the interviewer that it was taken from:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know - there's a reaction in her that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that's pretty powerful stuff

Perhaps your retention is a little off.

[Minrott]

You're right. He didn't say it when I thought he did.

He still said it. And it's still amusing.

ETA: I really did fall asleep during his speech, and saw this in another forum, and conjectured it was from the speech.