Sen. Barack Obama sought to tamp down the fires of racial tension that have inflamed the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, while stressing the need for the country to begin a sincere dialogue about race.
In a widely-praised speech Tuesday in Philadelphia, Obama said it was time to break “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for many years.”
“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,” Obama said.
Obama said it was important that Americans understood the deep pain and anger black Americans feel as a result of the nation’s history and that black Americans should understand that others have been the victims of discrimination and bad domestic and foreign policy.
The speech was, in part, a reiteration of Obama’s rejection of remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright, retired pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, was attacked for saying that Obama’s opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, would never know what it would be like to suffer as a black man in America and that the country was engaged in a war on terrorism because of past foreign policy blunders.
Obama has said he did not agree with Wright’s statements and that Wright’s “profound mistake” was “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 … is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.”
"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me," Obama said of Wright Tuesday. "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," said Obama.
The senator also took on remarks by Clinton’s longtime supporter and fundraiser Geraldine Ferraro, who told reporters in California that Obama was only successful as a candidate because he is a black man.
Ferraro stepped down from the Clinton campaign after coming under fire for the remarks.
“I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork,” Obama said. “We can dismiss Rev. 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.”
While the speech clearly was aimed at dealing with those remarks, Obama also sought to extend the dialogue to a broader context that addresses America’s problems across racial lines.
"We have a choice in this country," Obama said. "We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. 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," intoned Obama, "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.'”
Initial reaction was positive.
“When the history of this campaign is written, it will be recorded that this was the seminal moment, the moment when (Obama) seized adversity and controversy and proved even more eloquently that he must be president,” GOP analyst Joe Watkins told MSNBC.
“I thought that it was rhetorically very strong, that it was sincere,” said Kim Pearson, a professor at The College of New Jersey, who conducted a live blog during the speech on Cover It Live. Fifty-three people signed on and joined in a conversation about the speech and on race.
“What struck me was there were people who expressed real fear of Obama because they didn’t think he had repudiated Rev. Wright strongly enough. They tended to be white,” Pearson told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “There were others who said they were never really troubled by Rev. Wright in the first place, who said their confidence in Obama was strengthened. Some of them were white. There were some who defended Wright more strongly.”
Pearson said that some of the respondents made an effort to reach out to those who had expressed fear, inviting them to openly discuss their concerns and to begin a conversation about race.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said he, too, thought Obama’s speech was outstanding.
“What he had to do was respond to all the criticism of Wright, and what he did, basically, was go on the offensive and laid down a much broader vision of race and America, the direction of the dialogue on race in America," said Robinson. "It was the kind of analysis that had a lot for people to chew on.”
Still, Robinson told BlackAmericaWeb.com, whether the speech would actually elevate the dialogue would depend on “how this very nuanced kind of speech gets projected in the days and weeks ahead.”
“I thought Obama's speech was nothing short of masterful. He acknowledged in powerful ways the complicated racial dynamics in U.S. society. He was empathetic -- in ways that few others can be -- to the frustrations of everyone,” said Marie Hardin, PhD, a journalism professor at Penn State University.
“I think he did distance himself from the rhetoric of Rev. Wright in a way that was both clear and humane,” Hardin said in an e-mail.
“What I appreciated most was the anecdote he used about his white grandmother in illustrating his resistance to disowning Wright, and I can relate personally: My dad and mom, and others in my family, have made many racist, sexist and homophobic comments over the years. I disavow those sentiments and all of the behavior that goes with them. But I don't disown my family,” Hardin said.
“As brilliant as his speech was, I am not naive enough to think that his message will be accurately and fully reflected in the sound bites that most Americans will hear -- and that is frustrating," said Hardin. "I think that it's easy to boil this speech down to the fact that Obama didn't disown Wright -- and leave it there. And that's too bad.”
Within hours of the initial plaudits, Obama was being criticized for just that.
Diversity expert and dialogue facilitator David Campt said he was not surprised to see conservative pundits attack Obama’s speech, but he was disappointed when he saw white Pennsylvania voters seizing on the speech in a similarly narrow way.
“As long as people are not talking to each other across racial lines, all we’re going to do is watch television rather than engage,” Campt told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
He said people of other races need to understand why black people didn’t find Wright’s message hateful or see the need to confront Wright even when they didn’t agree.
“The idea that 9/11 was somewhat caused by U.S. foreign policy is something (former Republican presidential candidate) Ron Paul has said. Wright is being castigated for saying Clinton 'has never been called a nigger.' We know that’s true. He’s being castigated for saying that America is controlled by rich white people. Well, if you take the top 100 richest people in the country, you’re going to find they are disproportionately white and male,” Campt said.
It’s not so much the message, he attests, but the delivery and who is saying it that makes the difference.
“It comes down to whether we as a society will create a forum for this conversation to happen,” Campt said. “There will never be understanding about this situation unless people are talking to people who look at the world very differently.”
