Anytime someone says It’s time we had a “candid conversation” about something, I instinctively cringe, recalling the fiasco of trying to talk to our adolescent son about sex or numerous horror stories about those dreadful “couples-encounter” sessions that, I’m convinced, ultimately enrich more divorce lawyers than marriages. Hence, it’s always an apprehensive moment when I get word of an impending free and frank discussion of race, a topic that Barack Obama has done his best to avoid throughout what, to date, at least, has been a remarkably successful campaign. When I first read the text of his speech, which he apparently wrote himself, I was overwhelmed by its exceedingly skillful conjoining of eloquence and truth. Barack Obama is one more sensitive and thoughtful dude, just the sort, unfortunately, who, up to now, hasn’t had a prayer of winning the presidency for more than a generation. His remarks had the ring both of courage and conviction when he spoke to blacks about whites:
"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. ... 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. ... 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.”
No black public figure in recent memory has shown such empathy with blue collar whites or at least dared to articulate it this straightforwardly. I’m not completely sure how this is going to play with some of those whites, however. Sometimes people who complain of being misunderstood are not particularly appreciative when someone appears to understand them better than they might understand themselves.
Anyone familiar with the history of southern politics surely knows Obama spoke the truth when he confronted this country’s politicized obsession with race:
“We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.(i.e., the politics of the Billarys) 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.”
It is, of course, in Obama’s interest to see the politics of race put aside, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t right about why it should be put aside. It’s at this point, however, where I think this speech--or any speech he might have given short of admitting that he should have openly repudiated Rev. Wright and departed Trinity Church a long time ago--probably fell short of the mark politically for a lot of white Americans.
I don’t question the sincerity of Obama’s explanation that he could no more disown Rev. Wright than he 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.”
I get this completely. I have lifelong friends whose racial views sometimes make me uncomfortable as well. That said, I’m not sure everybody is going to buy the analogy between Rev. Wright and Obama’s granny, who, after all, never stood up before thousands of people to bitterly and passionately express her negative views on black people. In truth, it’s hard to say whether, had he even been so inclined, Obama would have scored that many recovery points with whites by totally ditching the hatemongering Rev. at this point. This is probably a case where the political damage is too “done” to be undone. Despite their incredibly low bottom line, even the Billarys may have trouble figuring out how to capitalize further on this setback, but though Hillary’s best strategy is probably to hold back, as we all know, that ain’t exactly her style. There are no such restraints on the Repubs, however, and though McCain will probably steer clear of it, that ‘rhoided-up rhino, Rush Limbaugh and others his ilk who want desperately to run against Hillary in the fall are already having a field day. Certainly, we may be assured that Rev. Wright’s sermons will indeed be talked about “every day between now and the election.” Not only that, but the most offensive clips from the sermons will doubtless also appear in a video montage with Michelle Obama’s remarks about finally being “proud” of America and perhaps even that seemingly ubiquitous photo of Sen. Obama standing with his arms by his side during the National Anthem while Sen. Clinton and others hold their hands over their hearts. The politics of paranoia isn’t any fairer or more civilized than the politics of race, after all.
Johnny Mac, meanwhile, is cruising along, his gloomy message, summarized by Pat Buchanan as “The jobs aren’t coming back, and the immigrants aren’t going home, but there will be war” largely unscrutinized by a distracted electorate. For Barack Obama, it remains only to, in LBJ’s words, “hunker down like a jackass in a hailstorm” and hope the hailstorm subsides before inflicting irreparable damage. Having given one of the finest and potentially most significant speeches on race in America since the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, he may well have secured his place in history. Whether what he said will be well enough understood and widely enough accepted in his own time to secure his place in the White House remains to be seen.
